


When the Bubble Bursts

by Qrimson



Series: Marauders Mystery Tour [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First War with Voldemort, Friendship, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), Mischief Managed, Multi, References to the Beatles, Remus Lupin & James Potter Friendship, Remus Lupin & Peter Pettigrew Friendship, Sirius Black & James Potter Friendship, Sirius Black & Remus Lupin Friendship, Wizard Angst, also gay wizard angst this time, still mostly canon for now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 118,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28510578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qrimson/pseuds/Qrimson
Summary: What do you do when your best friend's father flees the country?If Peter had his way, it'd be letting things just get back to normal. But he and his friends will soon learn normal is never coming back. As they grapple with a castle full of students who hate their guts, the sudden and terrifying onset of teen romance, and the constant stress of a war being waged just beyond the walls of Hogwarts, James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter all find themselves reaching a point of no return, where they must start on a path to becoming the Marauders they were born to be... or simply shatter.
Relationships: Dorcas Meadowes/James Potter, Peter Pettigrew/Original Female Character(s), Sirius Black & Remus Lupin & Peter Pettigrew & James Potter, Sirius Black/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Marauders Mystery Tour [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1131629
Comments: 22
Kudos: 11





	1. A Hard Day's Night

**Author's Note:**

> This one has been a long time coming.
> 
> When I ended the prior installment of this series with a cliffhanger, I expected it would only take a few months before I was able to pull readers back off the edge. Turns out moving across country for grad school is not conducive to a good fanfic-writing environment. Neither is a global pandemic.
> 
> On the other hand, there are bits of this fic -- great bits -- that never would have made it in without the time to think, and edit, and reflect. And, for the first time since I started writing this series, I know where the story is going next beyond broad strokes... which should mean you won't be experience another wait quite so long anytime soon.
> 
> As always, thanks to @chchchchcherrybomb, both for bursting my bubble when these drafts were worse than I thought and for keeping me aloft when they were better.
> 
> Q: "What will you do when the bubble bursts?"  
> John: "Get jobs." -- Beatles press conference, Los Angeles, Aug. 1964

It had been almost 72 hours since Peter Pettigrew vanished in front of their eyes in Diagon Alley, and if one more person wrote a letter instead of Doing Something, James Potter was going to explode.

“Oh, stop sulking,” Sirius said from across the room. He was sprawled out on James’s bed, looking down at one of the mirrors he’d inadvertently stolen from Wiseacre’s Wizarding Equipment. “Remus, tell him to stop sulking.”

“If he isn’t listening to you, he’s not going to listen to me.” Remus’s voice came through the glass sounding sharper and more hollow, somehow — or maybe James just hadn’t heard him be quite this sarcastic in a while. “James, I don’t know what else you want us to do. I’m in Whitshire. You’re both in the Midlands. And we’re 13.”

“Peter is missing!” James shouted, begrudgingly coming over to sit next to Sirius. “And we’re not doing anything.”

“He’s not missing,” Remus said, though he didn’t look very confident through the mirror. “His dad came and got him, and we haven’t heard from him since.”

“…Admittedly,” Sirius said “when you say it like that, I agree with James. He’s sort of missing.”

“See!”

“But there isn’t really anything we can do!” Sirius said. “Last we knew, Peter was with his dad. And your dad said that if he left in the custody of a parent, the Ministry won’t get involved unless the other parent makes the complaint, or he hasn’t been reachable for a week or two.”

“My dad said if we could think of his mum’s maiden name, he could write to her, since they probably were in school around the same time,” Remus said. “But I don’t think Peter ever told us what it was.”

“Bet my parents would know,” Sirius muttered. “Figures Peter would go missing a week after I turn my cousin’s wedding into a national incident and run away from home.”

“Guys,” James said, “I think we need to go over the facts again.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Merlin’s breath.”

“James!” Remus shouted through the mirror. “We _know_ the facts.”

Here were the facts:

James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter had been minding their own business in Wiseacre’s Wizarding Equipment, fresh off of repairing their beautiful and unique friendship, when a somewhat-unhinged bloke stormed in and grabbed Peter’s arm, shouting about how he was Peter’s dad and his mum was something-something-something.

Despite their protests, the stranger who continued to say he was Peter’s dad (but offered no concrete evidence, as James had repeatedly pointed out) dragged their friend out of the store and apparated away, leaving them standing on the street looking at nothing.

After some light panicking, the three of them regrouped. James’s mother had made it explicitly clear that his father was not supposed to stop at his favorite off-license, which meant that was obviously the place where they found him. Two explanations later — one delivered very quickly, which his father didn’t understand a bit of, and one much slower, after he convinced them all to go to the Leaky Cauldron and sit down — James and the other had conveyed everything they knew. Which wasn’t much.

Despite James’s insistence that they needed to go to the Ministry right away, his dad had instead committed to writing Peter’s dad a letter when they got back to the house and promising that, if he didn’t get a reply owl within a day or so, he and Euphemia would start contacting their old acquaintances in London to follow up. He, Sirius and Remus agreed to this plan. Then Remus went back to Whitshire with one of the mirrors they’d discovered in Sirius’s pocket, he and Sirius went back to Godric’s Hollow, and they all wrote their own letters to Peter anyway.

Owls returned emptyhanded. No letter from Arthur Pettigrew. No letter from Peter.

His parents consulted each other, came up with a few names, and then went to the local Owl Post Office to see if old friends in the Ministry could check up on the Pettigrews, discover what’s happening. James and Remus wrote another letter to Peter each, and fretted via mirror for two hours after bedtime until James’s mother rapped on the doorframe and told them to stop imagining she or his father have gone deaf yet.

Nothing again. Not even a courtesy no, from any of his parents’ friends.

And now, they were sitting here, totally at a loss for how to find Peter.

Maybe going over the facts again wasn’t as helpful as he’d thought it would be.

“Sirius, you live in London,” James said. “Do you think if we went down there, we could figure out where Peter’s dad lives?”

“Mate, you’re barking mad,” Sirius said. “I know you have basically only ever been to Diagon Alley, but you have no idea how huge London is. You know how big Hogwarts is? Imagine a hundred Hogwartses, and you don’t know where any of the trick stairwells are, and you’ve never been anywhere except for two rooms on one floor of one of the hundred Hogwartses.”

“Please stop saying ‘Hogwartses,’” Remus groaned.

“Well, it’s better than just sitting here,” James said. “He lives in a Muggle neighborhood, right? What if we convinced my dad to take us to London, and then we went to, like, the Muggle version of the Ministry for Magic, and said we just wanted to look up where—”

“James? Sirius?”

The sudden shout from downstairs cut James off mid-idea, and he and Sirius both turned their heads to listen for the sound of his father actually coming up the stairs to his room. No footsteps. He wanted them to come downstairs. That meant whatever he wanted to tell them wasn’t a casual thing. It was important.

“We gotta go,” James said, leaning in so Remus could see his face better. “My dad’s calling. Something about Peter, I think.”

“Okay,” Remus said, looking pale. “Tell me as soon as you know something. Promise?”

“We promise,” James said. He wiped his hand over the mirror, Remus’s face vanishing from sight as he did, and Sirius scooped it back up off the bed as he got to his feet.

They hurried down the stairs at full speed, nearly knocking each other over on the turn halfway down. In the dining room, his father was poring over the _Sunday Prophet_ with a frown, and his mother was anxiously standing in the corner, stirring her tea round and round with a spoon.

“Merlin,” James breathed, coming to a full stop at the sight. “He’s made the paper? What happened? Did they find him? Is he—”

“There’s nothing about Peter in the story,” his father said. “But I think you’ll find that’s good news. Unfortunately.”

James felt his stomach lurch. He sat down slowly next to his father, Sirius taking the chair beside him as he took the paper and arranged it so he could read the inch-high headline.

**DEATH EATER SMUGGLING SCANDAL SHAKES MINISTRY**

The Ministry of Magic’s Department of International Magical Cooperation has been thrown into complete disarray by the discovery that at least two of its highest-ranking officials have been collaborating for more than a year with the group of renegade wizards known as “Death Eaters.”

Department Head Phineas Steele and senior field agent Arthur Pettigrew, both of the International Magical Trading Standards Body, stand accused of consorting with anti-Ministry forces, leaking of governmental secrets, smuggling, bribery, fraud, and felonious misfiling of paperwork, crimes which together amount to a minimum of 40 years in Azkaban. The whereabouts of both men are unknown; Pettigrew is reportedly on a trade mission along the Mediterranean, while Steele has not been seen since leaving Ministry offices on Wednesday evening.

“This is the most egregious betrayal of the Ministry in recent memory,” said Minister for Magic Eugenia Jenkins this morning. “While Steele and Pettigrew’s crimes appear limited to monetary gain at this time, there’s no telling how much information they may have leaked to Voldemort’s forces. Capturing them is the Ministry’s top priority, and I have every confidence our Aurors will discover their whereabouts soon.”

The exact details of Steele and Pettigrew’s scheme have not been released to the general public, but interviews with Ministry officials who wished to remain off the record suggest that the duo may have played a part in the recent shortages of potion ingredients, amulets, and other items of magical affinity throughout Europe — previously attributed by Steele’s own office to poor harvests in the Italian and German countrysides, as well as deliberate stockpiling by merchants seeking to take advantage of the ongoing unrest in Britain.

“I’m not saying the numbers added up,” said a young witch from the department who refused to identify herself. “But Steele’s reasons why they didn’t add up made sense. I still can’t believe he or Arthur did all that you’re sayin’.”

That belief isn’t borne out by evidence from elsewhere in the Ministry, though. Officials in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office say Pettigrew had been on their radar for years. They believe him to be the largest smuggler of Muggle goods into Britain — not in itself a crime under wizarding law, as long as he never altered any goods using magic nor broke the International Statute of Secrecy in the process of shipping them into the country — but could never convince their superiors to take a closer look at him until earlier this month. It is unknown what changed to make Pettigrew a priority for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

Ministry officials have not ruled out the possibility that additional members of the Department of International Magical Cooperation were a part of Steele and Pettigrew’s crimes, and there is reason to suspect that members of their families may have been involved as well. While Steele’s eldest two sons, both members of the Ministry, have turned themselves in for questioning about their father’s disappearance, his wife and youngest son have also been reported missing. Pettigrew is recently divorced, but officials speaking on background say the Department of Law Enforcement is questioning his ex-wife, Anna Sayre, who has been living in southern France with an unknown man for the past two years. Her activities during this time are as of yet unknown.

By the time he was done reading the article, Sirius had one hand locked over his mouth to keep from swearing aloud, and the other one was tightly gripping James’s forearm under the table.

“They don’t say anything about Peter,” James said, furrowing his brow in confusion.

“Merlin’s bl — uh — blue socks,” Sirius stammered, catching himself just in time. James couldn’t figure out why he was worrying about cursing in front of his parents at a time like this. “Is that all you took away from the story?”

“He’s right, James,” his father said. “This is bigger than Peter. Much bigger.”

“I mean, I get that,” James replied, tugging the paper closer and skimming through the article. “I just mean… They say Steele’s wife and son are missing. But they don’t say anything about Peter. Does that mean he’s not missing? Or that they just don’t know where he is?”

“I think,” his father said, “if Peter was also on the run, they would say so. And I think if… Well, there’s no mention of Arthur being a danger, which leads me to believe the Ministry doesn’t have any evidence of him harming anyone. Peter or otherwise.”

“Then where is he?” James asked. “Peter’s dad took him with wherever they went after Diagon Alley. If he fled the country, why wouldn’t Peter be with him?”

His father opened his mouth to give what James expected to be a lousy excuse, but his mother interrupted him.

“Fleamont, why don’t we drop in at the Prophet offices?” she said. “You know Zacharius Tubbs and I go way back. Maybe he can give us some information your friends at the Ministry couldn’t.”

“Dear, while I fervently believe you batting your eyelashes at good ol’ Tubby would normally work the same magic it always does on me—”

Yuck.

“—I don’t know if there’s any more to tell. The _Prophet_ loves gossip. If there was more to tell, they’d be telling it — or at least hinting at it. The only drama I see in this story is a _Prophet_ reporter trying to decide if it’s more incriminating and scandalous for Pettigrew’s ex-wife to be living abroad or living with an ‘unknown man.’ A Muggle, probably, or they’d have taken the time to find out who he was.”

“I thought Peter’s parents were just estranged,” Sirius said, staring into his teacup. “Isn’t that what Peter told us, James?”

James couldn’t remember. But the marital status of Peter’s parents didn’t really seem like a priority at the moment. “The article says something made the Ministry start looking into Peter’s dad at the beginning of the month. You don’t think—”

James glanced sidelong at his parents, who were listening much too intently for his taste. When he came home for the summer, he’d told them that he and Remus had gotten into a fight because the other three boys got in trouble for being out past curfew the last night of school, and he’d left early and gotten away with it. Which was sort of true. Except it left out the Cavern, and the Butterbeer, and the semi-illegal record player, and the Invisibility Cloak, none of which he wanted to get into at the breakfast table.

Luckily, Sirius got the hint. “You’re right,” he said quickly. “That’s around the time Peter’s dad left the country. I bet something happened while he was abroad.”

He must have come to the same conclusion as James: When McGonagall reported the enchanted record player to the Ministry, the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Department finally had the excuse they needed to investigate.

James couldn’t decide if he should feel excited that the four of them had inadvertently exposed a horrible conspiracy to aid the Death Eaters or terrified that they’d set in motion Peter’s kidnapping and/or murder. Probably depended on whether it was “and” or “or.”

“Well, I’m going to go anyway,” James’s mother said, giving his father’s shoulder a slight squeeze. “We can’t just sit here, waiting for another edition of the _Prophet_ to come. It’s not fair to the boys. Not when we can do something, at least.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” he replied. He smiled up at her with a boyish grin as she summoned her light traveling cloak and a hat from the entrance hall, then stood to say farewell. “Now, you behave yourself with the editor of the _Daily Prophet_ , young miss. I’ve won your heart from him once, but I’m getting a little old to do it again.”

Double yuck.

His mother rolled her eyes. “We dated for a week, Fleamont. I’ve been more intimate with our banker.”

“Oh, Wringwrog is acceptable. That goblin’s got a fine head on his shoulders. Much better sense of numbers than me, and he’s less likely to embarrass you at parties.”

James looked over at Sirius in apology, mortified. “I’m so sorry you’re having to see this,” he muttered.

Sirius studied James like he was a madman. “You’re joking, right?”

“James,” his mother said, coming around the table to give him a kiss goodbye, “I’m not sure when I’ll be back for Sunday dinner, so why don’t you use the extra time to help your father clean up the house? Your room is a good place to start; nothing in there’s been dusted since you came back from Hogwarts, I’d imagine.”

“But Sirius is here, and—”

“All the better,” his mother said with a smile. “You’re the one who’s complained your whole life that we didn’t have another child to help you with chores. Now you’ve got someone to help you. You’d think he’d be more grateful, Fleamont.”

James sighed heavily, but he didn’t argue. He just gave his mother a peck on the cheek, and then stomped upstairs, Sirius right behind him.

“They’re just trying to keep us from doing anything useful,” he groused to Sirius, as he tried to shove his dirty robes deeper into a hamper for the house elves. “They’re always like this, every time something big happens. ‘Go clean your room, and we’ll talk about it later.’ It’s so transparent.”

“Well, it’s not like there’s anything we _can_ do,” Sirius said, grimacing at whatever was under James’s bed. “There was nothing in that _Prophet_ story about Peter. Far as they’re concerned, he just dropped off the face of the earth.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” James said. “I’m worried that his dad grabbed him, pulled him out of Wiseacre’s, and… well, dropped him right off the face of the earth.”

James Potter might not have been about to explode quite yet. But if he wasn’t exploding, he really didn’t know what else there was to do.

* * *

Practically the instant James and Sirius told him what was going on, Remus had raced downstairs to convince his father to pay up for a _Prophet_ subscription.

They’d never had one before — his father’s excuse was alternately that they moved too often and that it would be too suspicious for owls to keep flying in and out daily — but when Remus explained what was going on with Peter, he quickly gave in, sending the family owl off to Diagon Alley with some coins in a pouch. His own inquiries at the Ministry had been as fruitless as the Potters’, and Remus could sense that his father was more anxious than he was willing to admit about the boy who’d spent two weeks in their home.

His payment must have gotten to the _Prophet_ offices just in time. A few hours after it left, their owl returned with a companion, who was clutching an _Evening Prophet_ in its talons.

“I thought the _Prophet_ was just a daily paper,” Remus said, taking the paper from the unfamiliar owl and dropping a couple Knuts into the pouch on its leg before it flew away.

“It is,” his father said, coming across the room to look over Remus’s shoulder. “They only publish an evening edition when there’s some huge story…”

It only took a second’s glance to see what it was. A huge picture filled up most of the top half of the paper, depicting a half-dozen Aurors standing over an older wizard they had Stunned.

**STEELE CAPTURED BY HEROIC HIT WIZARDS, PETTIGREW STILL AT LARGE**

A team of six Hit Wizards has successfully apprehended Phineas Steele, the compromised Head of the International Magical Trading Standards Body, while he was attempting to slip aboard a Muggle transport from France to an unknown African country. He is presently being transported to Azkaban, to await trial, and his wife and son are in Ministry custody being questioned.

While Steele may be no longer a threat to the wizarding world, his subordinate and co-conspirator Arthur Pettigrew remains at large.

“That was fast,” his father said, reaching over Remus to unfold the paper all the way. He seemed to be reading the full story, but Remus only had eyes for information about Peter, and he skimmed from “Pettigrew” to “Pettigrew.”

“Harold Minchum, head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, says Pettigrew’s capture will be their highest priority.”

...

“While Pettigrew has no record of violence or inclination to Dark magic, he is still considered desperate and dangerous. If you encounter him, do not engage him, and contact the Ministry immediately.”

...

“Ministry officials refuse to confirm or deny whether Anna Sayre, Pettigrew’s ex-wife, is a suspect in their investigation.”

...

“Steele’s eldest sons, Tolliver and Sloan, have continued to deny any involvement in their father’s scheme, though they have not stated whether they believe their younger brother, Jasper, was involved. Pettigrew’s only son, a student at Hogwarts, was placed in supervisory care by Aurors who discovered him in his father’s home on Thursday afternoon.”

“Peter!” Remus said, tugging the paper away from his father to reread the bit he’d just seen. There wasn’t any other mention of Peter, though — just the one half-reference, and then the writer went off into a long thread about all the different things Steele and Peter’s dad had allegedly been sneaking into the country.

“Remus. I was reading that.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Remus shoved the paper back at his dad and raced for the stairs, nearly barreling down his mother as he met her halfway up to his room.

“Young man,” she shouted behind him, catching herself on the banister, “what have I told you about running in the house?!”

“Sorrymumit’sanemergency!”

Remus ran into his room and swung the door shut. He hadn’t mentioned the mirror Sirius had stolen to his parents — they would probably take him to Diagon Alley and make him give it back — but with Peter kidnapped, Remus couldn’t deny it was good to have a way to communicate quickly.

“Sirius!” he shouted, once he had the mirror out from the back of his desk drawer. “Sirius, are you and James there?”

As he looked into it, his own face melted away, replaced by a haphazard darkness that must have been Sirius’s pocket. He could hear the mumbled sounds of James and Sirius talking and laughing, so he shouted again, trying to get the boys’ attention.

Suddenly, the darkness shifted, and the picture changed, shifting and shaking as Sirius took the mirror from his trousers pocket. “Sorry, mate,” he said, holding the mirror up so Remus could see his face. “James and I were looking at photos of his parents from when they were right out of school. Did you know that in the ‘20s, it was super in-fashion for wizards to wear Muggle suit coats that went down to their ankles? It. Is. Hilarious.”

“Have you gotten the _Evening Prophet?_ ” Remus said, interrupting Sirius before he launched into a rant about wizarding menswear again.

“Shite,” James cursed. Remus could only see his shoulder, and his voice was muffled, but he at least had the undertone of worry Remus was hoping to impart on his friends. “An _Evening Prophet_? Mum didn’t — something must have happened with the case, right? I don’t think it’s come yet, but—”

A faint shout interrupted him.

“Goddammit, Tubby!”

“Oops,” James said, “guess my mom just saw the _Prophet_. She told us her friend who’s the editor now didn’t know anything.”

“If that was true, it isn’t now,” Remus replied. “The _Prophet’s_ mostly about the other guy, Steele, but there’s a tiny sentence near the end that mentions Peter.”

“Is he okay?” James said, ducking his head properly in view of the mirror, and shoving Sirius to the side.

“I think so,” Remus said. “It says that they found him at his dad’s house on Thursday, right after we last saw him. He’s been in something called “supervisory care” ever since.”

“That’s a relief,” James said. “So he’s okay.”

“I mean, as okay as you can be when your dad is a treasonous fugitive,” Sirius said, earning an elbow from James.

“That’s all I know for now,” Remus said, feeling a little sheepish for rushing all the way up here. He had made such a big deal about the article, but saying it out loud, the only thing it changed is that they didn’t have to worry about was that Peter wasn’t on the run with his dad. Or worse. It didn’t explain why Peter hadn’t responded to any of their letters. And it didn’t give them any ideas on what to do next.

“I mean, that’s not nothing, Remus,” Sirius said. “We know Peter’s okay. We can figure out everything else one day at a time.”

“So wait,” James said, suddenly grinning. “The _Prophet_ had an update on Peter’s situation? My mum’s going to be _furious_. She went all the way down to their Diagon Alley offices, and their editor told her right to her face that nobody there knew where Peter was.”

“They probably didn’t even know Peter existed,” Sirius said, sticking his head just inside the rectangular frame of the mirror. “Maybe she tipped them off.”

“That’d make her even angrier, honestly.”

“So now what?” Remus asked.

He wished he hadn’t spoken. He could see from both James and Sirius’s faces that the question hadn’t even occurred to them yet.

“…I guess I could write him again,” James said. “He didn’t respond to any of my letters yet, but maybe the Ministry hasn’t let him see them.”

“Could be,” Remus allowed. “The article’s sort of vague on what ‘supervisory custody’ means. Maybe he’s locked up somewhere in the Ministry… maybe he’s back home.”

“Guys… It doesn’t matter.” Sirius looked back and forth between James and the mirror, a sour expression curdling his face. “If he’s at the Ministry, nothing we write is going to get through to him. If not…then the answer’s even more obvious. He just doesn’t want to talk to us.”

The three of them were silent a moment, pondering this new idea.

“That doesn’t make sense,” James said. “The last time we saw him, his father was dragging him away from us — presumably, trying to get him to flee the country with him. Obviously that didn’t work out — but why wouldn’t he want to tell us he’s okay?”

“Maybe he’s not okay,” Sirius said. “I mean, sure, even with the leaking of government secrets thing, Peter’s dad is still third-worst parent of the year behind my lousy—”

“Seriously?” James and Remus said simultaneously.

“—but even still,” Sirius said, ignoring them, “the guy kidnapped him, then abandoned him. Now Peter’s probably locked in the Ministry, getting grilled about whether he knew anything. Do you think you’d be in the mood for talking to anyone?”

“Well—”

Remus interrupted James before a full tangent started. “James, Sirius is right. We don’t know what’s going on in Peter’s mind. What he’s already been through in just the last few days… Honestly, the only one of us three who’s been through anything comparable is… well, after that wedding, it’s Sirius. So we should listen to him.”

To Remus’s surprise, the idea that what he’d experienced at the Lestrange wedding was comparable to Peter’s plight appeared to be a shock to Sirius. But he’d learned over the last two years that Sirius was terribly bad at seeing what was right in front of him.

“So what do we do?” James said. He was shaking a little now, with anxious energy. “Just sit here and wait for Peter to write us back?”

“Let’s give him a day or two,” Remus said. “This has got to be one of the worst weeks of his life. The whole country is going to know all the terrible things his dad has done. The last thing he needs is for us three to be harassing him, trying to get him to write us back so we feel better.”

But that didn’t feel quite right, Remus thought. He was imagining his own worst thing, his front-page-of-the- _Daily-Prophet_ exposure. If the world suddenly learned he was a werewolf, the only thing in the world he would want is for James, Sirius and Peter to be there by his side, helping him weather the storm.

Why didn’t Peter want the same thing?

* * *

Sirius had never had trouble sleeping in his life. He’d napped through toddler Regulus’s screaming, dozed off at dozens of pureblood family functions, and generally given up on the idea of successfully reading anything in bed, even _Rolling Stone_.

So why in the whole wide wizarding world was he spending the night tossing and turning in this borrowed bed?

He sat up straight finally, head a half-foot from the ceiling. It wasn’t the mattress that was the problem — the bunk Fleamont had conjured atop James’s regular bed was as comfy as the full four-poster he had at home, if not more. But if he wasn’t going to be able to sleep, he might as well go downstairs and see if he could find something in the Potters’ pantry that he wouldn’t feel guilty for pinching.

Silent as he could, he crept down the ladder from his bed and stepped into the slippers he’d transfigured earlier in the week. He’d been disappointed at first to discover that it didn’t work as well to go from robins to slippers as rabbits to slippers — but they were comfy enough, and he was growing to like the orange feathery bit on top.

James didn’t stir as he snuck out, and Sirius couldn’t hear anything from his parents’ room except Fleamont’s soft snoring. But when he got down to the first floor and turned the corner to the kitchen, he froze — there was a lamp on in the sitting room beyond.

“Oh!”

It was Euphemia, he realized, sitting up with a book. She’d seen him immediately, but he still didn’t move as she adjusted her spectacles to look at him better.

“Dear, what are you doing up? Is something the matter with your room?”

Images of his mother catching him out of bed at night ran through Sirius’s mind. This better not be what seeing your life flash before your eyes was like.

“No, of course not,” he said. “I was just, um, er, I—”

She caught on quick. But, to Sirius’s surprise, she just smiled.

“You’re a night owl like me,” she said, closing the book and setting it on the nightstand beside her. “I had a bit of a guess, of course. You’ve slept in later than even James every night you’ve been here.”

“I just like my normal nine hours of sleep,” Sirius said, feebly. He was surprised not to be in trouble yet.

“Well, come on in here then,” she said. “I’ve already nicked the good biscuits from the pantry. It’ll be nice to have some company for a change.”

Sirius considered whether he should bang his knee on the table when he went by, since he was probably dreaming, or just go with it.

He found himself doing as Euphemia had said, coming through the kitchen and sitting on the sofa next to her armchair. As she’d promised, beside her was the tin of lemon custard creams he’d been planning to look for.

“So, which is it,” she said, taking a biscuit for herself and studying him. “Can’t sleep at all, or woke up and can’t get _back_ to sleep?”

“First one,” Sirius muttered.

“Oh, I hate that,” she replied. “Usually it’s the other for me, but every once in a while…”

“It’s sort of weird,” Sirius said. “I never have problems falling asleep, normally. Sometimes I stay up too late, I guess, but it’s always on purpose.”

“I see.” Euphemia picked up her wand, and with a quick swish, summoned the tea kettle and some cups from the kitchen, a small tray appearing in the middle of the sitting room to hold them. By the time she spoke again, the water was already boiling. “You have a lot on your mind. More than usual.”

Sirius didn’t know what to say, so he just let Euphemia silently pour him a cup of tea. Given the hour, he’d been afraid to taste the cloying flavor of chamomile on his tongue, but it was something else. Something a little stimulating, but soothing too.

“It’s decaffeinated,” Euphemia said, clearly noticing his expression, “but it doesn’t taste like it, does it? An old source of mine sends me a batch every now and again from out east. She’s got a bit of a stake in a Darjeeling tea garden. Terribly lucrative. Pays for an awful lot of nice dinners and potion ingredients, though I’m sure her fellow investors don’t know that part.”

It suddenly occurred to Sirius that Euphemia Potter might be more complex than he’d given her credit for.

“Mrs. Potter… What exactly did you do for the _Prophet_ , if I can ask?”

James’s mum gave him a gentle smile. “Well, dear… A long, long time ago, I was their top international reporter. My older sister was a volunteer during the Muggles’ Great War — she got roped into the final battle against the Dark Lady Phoebe, in fact — and she brought all these marvelous stories back. So when Fleamont and I graduated, we went out on the Grand Tour together. Unmarried — our parents were scandalized — but we didn’t want to wait for all the pomp and circumstance of a wedding.

“When I got back, of course, we needed money. Fleamont had half an idea of Sleekeazy’s in his mind, so he stayed home to experiment. I knew a classmate who’d gotten work at the _Prophet_ — Zacharius, the editor now — and he got me on the international desk.”

“Huh,” Sirius said, sipping his tea. “How long were you writing for them?”

“Oh, not as long as these grey hairs are making you imagine,” she replied, reflexively touching the loose bun at the back of her head. “Fifteen, twenty years, maybe? And there were periodic breaks here and there, of course. A couple years in, I took a step back in the hopes that Fleamont and I could try and have a…”

She hesitated, and Sirius suddenly considered how much older James’s parents were than his own.

“And of course there was Sleekeazy’s, eventually,” she said quickly. “I helped Fleamont with that, once he got himself on the right track. But after a while, I got tired of traveling for such long stretches. Or, at least, doing so without Fleamont by my side. So I quit, for about a decade. Played the society wife, left my traveling for vacations — long ones, admittedly, but vacations nonetheless.”

“What changed?”

“James.” Euphemia practically grinned. “Fleamont and I were so terribly surprised when he… came along. But it was just the jolt we needed to get our priorities in order. He sold the company, and the two of us became full-time parents. So much later than all of our friends, but… well, at that point, it didn’t really matter to us whether we were early or late, I suppose.”

“So you never went back to writing?” Sirius asked. As he finished his cup of tea, the pot floated over of its own accord to refill it.

“Actually, I did,” she said. “Once James was a bit older. But not reporting...”

She seemed a bit embarrassed to admit it, but she finally did.

“Well, Sirius, you mustn’t tell, but I’m the original Dr. Medusa.”

Sirius nearly shouted loud enough to wake James and his dad.

“Shut up!”

Dr. Medusa was his favorite opinion column in the entirety of the _Prophet._ Dr. Medusa was the reason he read _any_ opinion column in the _Prophet_ , frankly. She’d been the subject of his mother’s ire for years, and Walburga was prone to reading the articles out loud in a scandalized tone to his father, adding in snide commentary about the writer’s “idiotic ideas of Muggleborn equality” or offering alternate suggestions like “Why doesn’t this writer just beat her children?”

After a while, it was the only thing his mother did that Sirius enjoyed — if not for the reasons Walburga would have liked — and he was seeing out the columns on his own the weeks they didn’t catch his mother’s attention. He’d never experienced the phenomenon of someone whose tongue was as sharp as his mother’s without the cruelty, and it made the columns fascinatingly delightful.

“You-you-you’re — oh my bloody hell. I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to curse, I just…oh, wow.”

James’s mum just smiled back at him. DR. MEDUSA WAS SMILING AT HIM.

“Yes, well…for a bit, yes. Raising James, I found that I needed something relaxing to do after he was in bed, to wind down, and — well, the _Prophet_ had a hole in their advice columnist pool, and I pitched ‘Dr. Medusa.’ I was as surprised as anyone when people liked what I had to say — or didn’t, as the case seemed to be equally as often.”

“Merlin’s bones,” Sirius said. His tea and insomnia were both completely forgotten. “So you’re the writer behind Dr. Medusa.”

“Well, not anymore,” she admitted. “I handed it off to a nice young girl about a year and a half ago. Once James went off to school — well, it felt like a good time to make a change. She’s not quite as strident about Muggleborn equality as I’d like, but the column’s moved away from that anyway. Too volatile, in this day and age.”

Sirius hadn’t been reading the column much since coming to Hogwarts, but now that he thought about it, he had noticed the tone had gotten a bit more colloquial every time he’d nicked a copy of Mary MacDonald’s to read through the opinions.

“Now,” Euphemia said, “I think that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about what you’re worried about.”

Sirius felt like he had conversational whiplash.

“What do you mean, “what I’m worried about’?”

“Sirius, dear, you said yourself you don’t usually have trouble sleeping,” Euphemia said. “I’m just… I want you to feel like you can talk to me about what’s going on. I’m sure it’s been a hard week for you.”

“It hasn’t, actually.” Sirius was afraid he sounded sarcastic, but it was true. The hardest weeks of his summer had been back at Grimmauld Place, stuck up in his room or being bossed around by his parents. Plus, the culmination of all that had been the worst wedding of all time, with a chaser of Unforgivable Curses and his mother actively trying to hex him.

It hadn’t been a hard week at the Potters’. It’d been a vacation.

His response seemed to surprise Euphemia, but she just took another sip of her tea, thinking. “What about Peter? You’re saying that hasn’t been hard?”

“Oh, well, sure,” Sirius allowed. “But we know he’s okay, at least. That takes some of the pressure off. Although…”

James’s mum was right, he realized. There was something about that bothering him.

“Remus said something, when we were talking on the mirrors upstairs. We were talking about how hard the last few days have been for Peter. And then he said the only person who knew what that would be like is me. Because of the wedding.

“I just… The wedding was horrible. It was bad enough just being around all the other pureblood families my parents socialize with, but — James probably told you about it all already.”

“He didn’t,” Euphemia said, leaning in. “Fleamont and I read the story in the paper, but that was it, Sirius.”

“Well… I found my cousin Bellatrix with her friends. Somewhere I wasn’t supposed to see them. And they were talking about… They put Imperius Curses on the Muggles who were supposed to be having a wedding there that day. Tortured them. Made them their puppets. That’s why I tried to blow everything up, because it was just so much more terrible than they usually are.

“I’m _used_ to how terrible they usually are. That’s the worst thing about all of this. I feel like I don’t actually know what Peter’s going through because I’m not surprised by anything they all do anymore. I mean, he’s got to be the most shocked teenager in the country right now. But I heard a member of my family talking about performing Unforgivable Curses on Muggles and I just — it wasn’t even the slightest bit shocking. I went straight from knowing it was happening to trying to stop it. Without even an instant of time in between to genuinely believe it wasn’t possible.”

Sirius felt cold all over. He couldn’t figure out why he was telling James’s mum all this, Dr. Medusa or not. Maybe it was the late hour. Maybe it was the fact that this was the longest conversation he’d willingly had with a woman his mother’s age or older that he could remember.

He was afraid everything he’d told her would make Euphemia freak out. Or worse, start crying and smother him with concern and affection, all fake of course.

But instead, she just sat there, nodding as he spoke, and giving him all of her attention. And when he’d told her everything, she just closed her eyes a moment, taking it all in.

“Thank you for sharing that with me, Sirius,” she finally said. She extended the arm holding her teacup and let go; it floated back into the kitchen with the pot and kettle. “I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that.”

“Me too,” he said, bitterly. There wasn’t much more to say.

After a few moments, Euphemia stood up, and Sirius shifted to do the same.

“No, no,” she said quickly. “I think I’ll be able to drift off now, but you don’t have to go to bed if you aren’t tired yet. It’s summertime; you can certainly sleep in tomorrow.”

“Really?” Sirius knew his mother wasn’t like most parents, but he was having trouble adjusting to the rules of a woman who was revealing herself to be Walburga’s total opposite. “James says you’re pretty strict about bedtimes.”

“Well, sure, for him.” Euphemia broke into a conspiratorial grin. “He’s like his father. He thinks he can stay up late without any consequences, but if he does it too many times in a row, he starts napping through dinner every afternoon until he adjusts back.”

“Huh,” Sirius said. “I suppose that explains why he’s always grumpier at the beginning of the week after we’ve— um…”

“Stop right there,” James’s mother said lightly. “You tell me any more, and you won’t be allowed to get away with anything next year.”

Sirius smiled back. He’d never thought about what it’d be like to be raised by parents who were also Gryffindors. There was something truly nice about it.

“Sleep well,” Euphemia said, with a slight wave. She started heading back toward the stairs, but suddenly stopped, seeming to think of something.

“Sirius,” she said, turning slightly to look back at him. “Fleamont will think it doesn’t need to be said, but… You are a lovely young man, Sirius. You’re a good friend to James, and I think your actions in the last week have shown that you have a bigger heart than even you believe. And I hope you know that you are welcome here whenever you care to be.”

“Oh.”

Sirius had no idea what sort of expression his face was making.

“That’s all,” Euphemia said, giving him a gentle look. “I hope you can get to sleep soon, dear.”

A question suddenly popped into Sirius’s head, and his tired brain asked it without thinking.

“Mrs. Potter… You asked me what worry was keeping me awake — what was keeping you awake?”

Euphemia stood there a moment, a little stunned, as if she was deciding whether to tell him the truth.

“I’m worried about this world my son’s living in,” she said, at last, before going back upstairs. “This world you’re all living in. I’m worried about what it’s going to put you through, before all’s said and done.”

It should have unnerved Sirius, he thought, as he muttered a quiet “ _Lumos_ ” to light his way to bed. But in some reverse way, it was sort of a comforting thought.

He’d never had a grownup worrying about him before.


	2. I Should Have Known Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Supervisory custody's not all it's cracked up to be.

Peter still couldn’t believe that out of all the Aurors who could have been put in charge of him after he got to the Ministry, he ended up with his old prefect Frank Longbottom.

The older boy — well, young man, he supposed — seemed to find the whole situation as strange as he did, at least. He’d kept looking out at Peter oddly out of his peripheral vision as he’d led him through the halls. Longbottom had heavy bags under his eyes now, Peter noted. It looked as though he’d had 30 nights of sleep tops since graduating a year earlier.

_(Probably staying up late searching for Dad, honestly.)_

After a very confusing hour of questioning, Peter had been handed off to Longbottom without much fanfare. The Auror had been tasked with bringing him down to a holding space of sorts in his dad’s department, the International Magical Trading Standards Body. The place looked like a tornado had hit it, desks ransacked and an ominous quiet hanging over everything. When he asked, Longbottom told him that the Aurors had been there earlier that day, hoping to catch some of his dad’s collaborators before they could flee.

_(Pretty sure Longbottom wasn’t supposed to tell me any of that, but I certainly can’t turn my nose up at any information…)_

Longbottom didn’t say whether they’d found anything, of course — just that most of the department was probably still being questioned, and that anyone cleared would have to work out of temporary offices until the resolution of the situation. That they’d be under surveillance went unsaid. That the “resolution of the situation” was the capture of Peter’s fugitive father also went unsaid.

Eventually, they made their way to a small break room at the back of the department.

_(We’ve gone the long way around, to avoid walking me past Dad’s office.)_

There wasn’t much too it: table, chairs, half-full bookshelf, pair of cabinets, lumpy couch, ugly bust of a goblin, door to a toilet at the back.

“Gonna have to leave you here,” Longbottom told him. “‘Least until we figure out what to do with you.”

_(What to do with me?)_

“Either me or another Auror’ll be outside the whole time,” Longbottom continued, “so no funny business in here, alright?”

Peter could see Longbottom putting on his Auror face now. It seemed all the more severe for him letting it slip earlier.

Longbottom seemed to take his silence as a yes. He drew his wand, conjuring a small cot at the back of the room, then walked away quickly and slammed the door behind him.

And then Peter was just there. Alone.

He cried right away, at first, like a little baby. But when he managed to get ahold of himself, he started to explore his makeshift prison.

It didn’t take long. There were no hidden depths to the sparse room or the loo attached, and Peter got the sense that an Auror team had already swept through. The break room was almost haunting in its simplicity. The single cot Longbottom had conjured wasn’t very encouraging either. It suggested he was going to spend the night. Strongly suggested.

But Peter tried not to panic any more than he already had. After he got done exploring the empty cabinets, he turned his eye to the bookshelf, reading most of the contents off and on over the next day. They were terribly boring, but there was nothing else to be done.

_(Other than scream, cry, try to sleep, fail to sleep, cry some more, wish I had made any decision other than staying in Britain alone.)_

Most of the books in the shelf were heavy tomes on trade alliances and financial affairs, none of which seemed like they’d been opened in a generation. Leaving those out, Peter had at his disposal a pair of joke books he remembered his father getting as a gag gift during a holiday party, a handful of basic spellbooks, Ministry manuals, and some paperbacks. He gave the copy of _Wizards are from Neptune, Witches are from Saturn_ a distasteful look and shoved it aside in favor of the three Dolores Chrystal mysteries on the shelf: _Erumpents Can Remember, 4.50 from Puddlemere, The Nifflertrap._

Over the remainder of the evening and into the next day, he made his way through all three Chrystal stories, both the joke books, and a few pages of everything else. He was trying to decide whether he should reread _Erumpents_ or have another good cry when the door burst open.

“Peter!”

His mother was suddenly there, sweeping into the room and wrapping her arms around him, despite Frank Longbottom’s weak protests.

Peter shouldn’t have been surprised to see her. Obviously the Ministry wasn’t just going to leave him here indefinitely; his father was a fugitive and someone would eventually have to show up and take care of him. His mother was the only family he had left.

But after hours trapped in this room, he had started to consider the possibility that maybe his mother didn’t want him back.

_(After all, she’s abandoned me before.)_

“Merlin’s ghost, Peter, have you been here the whole time? Has he been here the whole time?”

As his mother turned slightly to direct her rage at the Auror just beyond the doorway, Peter realized his mother was a shadow of the immaculate self she’d presented the last time he’d seen her, only a week past.

_(God, was that only a week ago?)_

Gone were the scarf, rings, overall glamour. His mother had come all the way from Nice in a pair of jeans, trainers, and an old gray t-shirt that looked suspiciously large and masculine on her. Even her hair was haphazard, a curly mess wrangled with a hair tie.

“Mrs. Pettigrew—”

“Miss Sayre.”

“Right. Shite.” The young Auror was blushing something fierce. “I’m sorry. For the name…and the cursing.”

“I don’t mind the cursing,” his mother said, rising to her full height and taking hold of Peter’s hand. “Considering the circumstances of why we’re here, I think you’ll understand my lack of interest in being referred to by my _ex_ -husband’s name.”

“Of course,” Longbottom said. “My apologies, again. The information we’re getting… Well, your divorce only went through last week, Miss Sayre. Department of Magical Law Enforcement isn’t as all-knowing as we appear.”

“I think that’s frankly pretty obvious,” she snapped. “Considering you had no idea of Arthur’s business for years. And considering you haven’t caught up with him _or_ his odious boss Steele yet.”

Her chastisement seemed to have the opposite effect intended. Longbottom stood up a bit straighter, staring Peter’s mother down.

“That’s frankly why you’re here, Miss Sayre. My superiors in the Auror Office are hoping you might be able to shed some light on his business. You may not be married to him now, but you were for more than a decade. As far as we can tell, you’re the only person close enough to question who isn’t already on the run.”

“What?” his mother said. “This is ridiculous. The Aurors who came to my doorstep just said Arthur had vanished, and Peter was—”

“I apologize if they misled you,” Longbottom said, raising a hand to interrupt her. Frankly, he didn’t look that sorry. “While we will ultimately be releasing your son into your custody, we’ll have a few questions to ask you first. The sooner you answer them to our satisfaction, the sooner you two can be on your way.”

_(“To our satisfaction” doesn’t sound very promising…)_

“This is outrageous,” his mother said. “I’ve been whisked away from my home in France under blatantly false pretenses. My son has been locked in a Ministry office for a full day. And my…fiancé is on his way to London now, to meet us at the house, with no idea what to expect.”

Bringing up Bertie — a “fiancé” now, apparently — was a bold play for his mother to make, given that her Muggle boyfriend shouldn’t really know about any of this. But Longbottom didn’t bat an eye.

“The house has already been cleared by the Aurors who arrived on the scene yesterday,” he said, “and the numerous magical defenses that previously surrounded the property have been undone. Mr. Edwards will be able to enter the residence without problem, assuming he has a key.”

Longbottom threw out the name without hesitation, and Peter could see him smile slightly when his mother flinched to hear it.

“Yes,” she said shortly. “I took a house key with when I left, years ago, and gave it to him before I apparated back to London with the Aurors. As long as the locks haven’t been changed—”

“They haven’t,” Peter piped up. “I used my old key to get back into the house last week.”

“Wonderful,” his mother replied, sourly. Peter suddenly realized she might have been angling for an opportunity to get him and herself out of the Ministry sooner rather than later.

_(Nice going, idiot.)_

“That’s settled then,” Longbottom said, signaling to another Auror out of sight. A middle-aged-witch came into view, with a stern expression on her round face. “Smith, she’s all yours. Scrimgeour said you should take her up to Interview Room B; he’ll be in when he’s done talking to the Steele brothers.”

The other Auror nodded. “Thank you, Longbottom. Right this way, Miss Sayre.”

His mother looked back at him, more than a little panic in her eyes. But all she said aloud was, “Don’t worry, Peter. I’ll just head upstairs and answer a few questions. I should be down here again soon and then we’ll go home, okay?”

“Sure,” Peter said, trying not to cry as his mom gave him another hug and kiss.

“Be brave, little glow worm,” she whispered in his ear.

Then she was gone, the door closing behind her, and Peter was alone again.

He made it halfway through _Erumpents_ before the crying started again.

* * *

The magic window in the break room had been shining with the light of a waning near-full moon for hours now, but Peter refused to lie down on the cot and go to sleep. Going to sleep meant admitting that his mother had been wrong. They weren’t getting out of here anytime soon. The Ministry was just going to keep them here until they caught his father. Or maybe they were just going to get sent to Azkaban, as co-conspirators or something.

_(He wouldn’t think that the Ministry would send a 13-year-old to Azkaban, except he also wouldn’t have thought they’d keep a 13-year-old imprisoned in a lousy break room for going-on-two days, so clearly his perception of the Ministry of Magic was inherently flawed.)_

He’d had a small temper tantrum at about 5:16 pm — he knew exactly when because he’d thrown one of the Ministry manuals at the clock and knocked it down, cracking it halfway and stopping it dead. Time had gotten a little fuzzy since then. He knew the sun was setting around 8 or 9 these days, so when the window had started to shift from a bright, irritatingly sunny day to a ruby-red twilight, he knew a couple of hours had passed. He would guess another hour from the twilight to the moonlit view he could see now. But after that was anybody’s guess. He wished he’d figured out some way to keep time before breaking the damn clock: how long it took to walk around the room; how long it took him to sing “Can’t Buy Me Love;” how long a guard shift was before he could hear one Auror’s feet come closer, getting him excited, and another Auror’s feet walk away, bringing him down again.

It had to have been at least three or four hours since sunset. He didn’t want to believe that. Believing that made him terrified that something had gone wrong with his mother’s questioning.

There was an Auror sitting right outside that door. Peter could bang on it, demand to be let out, to see his mother, see anyone.

But no one had come in when he’d been crying earlier. What if he banged and banged and banged on the door and nothing happened? He was already holding on by a thread as-is. If he started screaming for someone to open the door and nothing happened…

_(God, am I going mad in here?)_

Peter started pacing round and round the room, hoping the circuit would rein in his thoughts like a fuzzy sheepdog. He had to take stock of what he knew. Figure out what was happening.

He’d been in here since Thursday afternoon. That was when his dad had showed up in Diagon Alley. He’d said that he got lucky finding him, but that must have been a lie. Like everything else. His dad had been tracking him the whole time he was abroad. Maybe even longer. There probably wasn’t a place in the world he had ever gone without his dad finding out about it at some point.

They came back to the house. Had their big fight. Peter had said things he’d never thought he’d say to his father, heard things back he never dreamed his father would say. His dad had confessed to being a criminal. Not just a criminal. A criminal working with the worst group of Dark wizards Britain had ever seen. And he’d said that the people he’d worked with were all schoolmates of Peter’s mother.

_(Was that why she wasn’t coming back? Was his mother a Death Eater now too?)_

Then he’d vanished, off on a chain of Portkeys carrying him all the way to America, out of Peter’s life forever.

He hadn’t told the Aurors who came for him that part, but they hadn’t questioned him that hard. Peter had the sneaking suspicion that most of the wizards who’d invaded the apartment hadn’t even realized he was Hogwarts-aged at first, he’d been such a blubbering ninny.

But it had worked to his advantage. When he told them that his dad hadn’t said where they were going, but he just didn’t want to go, they’d believed it. His interrogation had only lasted about a half-hour, mostly taken up with him crying. Then they’d put him in here, with the cot, and the Dolores Chrystal novels, and all of his racing thoughts.

They must have searched the house while he was here. Longbottom had said the house was cleared, and that Bertie would be able to get in if he had a key. That meant they must have put the door back on, at least, and probably Obliviated any of their Muggle neighbors who had happened to see the whole affair. They also must not have found anything that could lead them to his dad. His mum had said both his father and his boss were still on the run, and even if she was wrong they wouldn’t be questioning her if they had him in custody.

Why hadn’t his mum come until today? For the first time, it occurred to Peter that his mother might not have run away from just his father. And his dad had told him that she had helped him make his first smuggling connections, hadn’t he? If she really did know a lot of Death Eaters, maybe she’d done something to make it more difficult for anyone in the wizarding world to track her down.

_(Don’t forget the possibility that she is actually a Death Eater. If one parent can lie to you for years, why not two?)_

The Aurors had lied to get her here, he knew that much. They had probably used the reverse of the same lie that had gotten Peter to leave his friends in Diagon Alley: “Something’s happened to Peter; come quickly.” Although she had known about his father’s crimes. But was that before or after someone had told her?

It wasn’t like it took more than eight hours to question someone innocent, right?

He wondered what James, Remus and Sirius were doing now. Were they trying to find out where he’d gone? Or had they just trusted his father’s words at face value, and gone back to having fun in Diagon Alley? While he had been getting grilled by a pair of Aurors, trying so hard to be brave, had they been just getting more ice cream at Florescue’s and exploring Knockturn Alley, with smiles on their faces?

Would they even care, when he told them about all this?

If he was _allowed_ to tell them about all this?

There hadn’t been any change in the window in who-knew-how-long. Peter didn’t remember whether the sun had moved, earlier in the day. Maybe he was being dramatic, and it had only been an hour or two past sunset. But he was tired, bone-tired. That made him think it had been longer. It also made him want to curl up on that cot. He wasn’t going to do that, though. He wasn’t going to give in. He was going to stay awake until—

The door opened suddenly, and Peter screamed.

“Peter, it’s me, it’s just me.”

It was his mother again, thank god, thank all the gods.

He ran over to her, throwing himself into her arms. “Can we go home now, please, can we go home?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

It was the most beautiful word in the English language.

Peter hadn’t seen the Auror who led them out of the Department of International Magical Cooperation before, and she didn’t meet either of their eyes as he and his mother left the break room. She followed silently at their heels as they walked out of his father’s former department for what Peter knew would be the last time.

As they left, the image of a glass paperweight flashed into his mind; he knew it would be somewhere in his father’s office. It was a present Peter had given him for his birthday years ago, when the three of them were still a family. His mother had helped with the enchanting of it; inside there was a scrap of colored paper with a message in Peter’s handwriting on it. The message changed every few minutes: “Hi Daddy!”, “When’s ‘Take Your Son to Work Day’?”, “Smile!”, “Whatcha doing?”, “I love you!”

Peter wondered if he’d get it back now.

_(Or if he even wanted it.)_

They went to the lift and took it down two floors, coming out in the Atrium again. The huge space was silent and cold, lit only by a small handful of torches and a few green-burning fireplaces further down the hall.

“We’ve arranged for your house to be connected to the Floo Network,” the Auror said softly as they walked toward those fireplaces. “We’d appreciate it if you left the connection active for the next few weeks, in case we need to schedule follow-up interviews at your home.”

“Of course,” his mother said, though her expression suggested she’d had to restrain herself from saying more bitter.

_(What did they question her about, and why so long? And what did she tell them?)_

“Until we capture your ex-husband, we will need you and the boy to remain in London. Preferably at that house, though if you find you need to move, we can find you alternate arrangements.”

“The house will be fine.” His mother looked repulsed by the idea of returning to Chiswick, frankly, but Peter couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. Hogwarts, maybe, but even that home seemed less appealing at the moment considering how his last night there had gone.

“And if he makes contact—”

“He won’t,” his mother snapped. “Anything else?”

The Auror looked a bit peevish, but didn’t issue any more commands as they stepped up to one of the fireplaces. “That’s it. You’re welcome to return home at your leisure.”

“Good,” his mother replied. She wordlessly nudged Peter ahead of her, toward the fireplace. He got the message.

He scarcely remembered the trip. He was too exhausted to be irritated by the smoky scent, snippets of half-heard late-night conversation, the hot and cold fire everywhere. All he knew was one moment he was in the Ministry, one moment somewhere else, and eventually the flames spat him back out onto a dark room, standing on the carpeting he’d spent 20 minutes crying into yesterday.

_(Was it only yesterday?)_

His mother was behind him in an instant.

“If I was in that godforsaken place another minute,” she said, “I might have burned it all down. Are you alright, dear?”

“Sure,” Peter said, softly. He could feel himself starting to fall asleep standing up.

His mother could clearly see it. She brushed his hair gently and steered him toward the steps. “Go to bed, love. I know it’s been a hard couple of days, but… You’re safe now, here, with me. All of this can wait for the morning.”

He didn’t hesitate. But on his way up the steps, he stopped for a second and took one look behind him at his mother.

She was just standing there, half-stunned, looking around the room.

_(She thought she’d never be here again. And now she can’t leave. And it’s all my fault.)_

He knew his mother loved him, he thought, as he shed his clothes and tucked himself into bed. It had taken him a long time to re-convince himself of that, after she left.

But his father loved him too. And look at all the things he’d done because of it.

* * *

Peter hadn’t realized he’d left his curtains open until the sun came straight in the windows, slowly waking him. He was half-surprised to find himself in his own bed, memories of the last few days all jumbled together in his early-morning mind.

For a moment, he thought about getting up to pull the blind down and going back to bed. But concern and curiosity overrode that instinct. His father was still in the wind, he assumed, and he’d barely spoken to his mother since she’d arrived to rescue him from the Ministry. He needed to find out what was going on — what had happened to her last night, and what they were going to do next.

So Peter swung his feet over the edge of the bed, automatically sliding them into slippers and padding toward the door. He noted — but ignored — the pile of letters on his nightstand, next to his wand, which the Ministry must have given back to his mother on their way home.

As he stepped into the hall, he hesitated, honestly unsure where to look for her first.

_(Would she have slept in Dad’s room? Their old room?)_

He didn’t have to answer that question right away, Peter realized, because he could hear the sound of breakfast being made from the level below. His mother had always been an early riser; she must have gotten up and gone downstairs to start making him something to eat. They could talk over eggs and sausages.

His stomach growled in anticipation as Peter came down the steps. “Did you find everything okay?” he called ahead as he got within shouting range. “I know Dad rearranged some of the drawers.”

Peter turned right into the kitchen as he alighted on the ground floor, and found himself staring at a stranger.

The intruder was wearing a matching set of bright blue checked pyjamas and fuzzy yellow slippers, flipping pancakes on the stovetop. As the man turned around to look at Peter, he noticed a slight paunch stretching the pyjama material around his navel, and he was wearing large round tortoiseshell glasses that he blinked through repeatedly.

“Oh,” he said, smiling. Peter couldn’t help but notice the man had a slightly bucktoothed grin. “You must be Peter. I’ve almost got breakfast done, if you’re hungry.”

“You…you’re…” Peter’s mind tried to catch up with what his eyes were seeing. “Are you with the Ministry?”

“No, no, I’m no government man,” he replied, shaking his head. “I’d been working for an office, though, back in Nice. Haven’t decided if I want to do the same here.”

Peter’s brain finally pushed the nonsense of the last 48 hours aside and put together the puzzle pieces. “You’re Bertie,” he stammered.

“Pleased to finally meet you,” his mother’s boyfriend-fiancé-whatever said. He turned back to the stovetop, lifting one last pancake onto a plate. “Think I used up just about all the ingredients in your pantry for this breakfast. Looks like you haven’t been shopping in a while.”

“I know,” Peter said automatically. “I’ve mostly had takeaway this week. I was gonna stop by the store on my way back home on Thursday. Didn’t work out.”

_(Why is he being so…normal?)_

“Well, I’m sure either your mum or I can go out once things are settled. Maybe we can make a full trip out of it, if you’re up to it.”

“Sure,” Peter said, only half-listening. He turned to look back at the sitting room, and saw that most everything in it was completely rearranged. The sofa and chairs were all at new, strange angles; the pictures were put up in the wrong order; the small card table was pulled back into the middle of the room, far from the corner his father had stuck it in after his mother had left. “What happened in the sitting room?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Bertie said from behind. Peter could hear his voice growing closer. “Is it not the way you like? The whole place was in such a state when I got here from the train station. I just sort of had to do my best. You’d think your wizard police would pick up after themselves.

“Why don’t you come sit at the table?” he said, lightly resting a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “We can have breakfast and get to know each other a bit before—”

Peter shouted and jerked away violently from Bertie’s hand, whipping around to face him. “Don’t touch me,” he hissed. He didn’t realize he’d drawn his wand until he saw Bertie’s eyes notice it and go wide with shock.

_(Good. He should be afraid of what he’s gotten himself into.)_

“I’m sorry,” Bertie said, backing up toward the kitchen. “I didn’t mean—”

“What the hell are you doing?”

His mother was halfway down the steps, clearly furious. She stormed down to stand between the two of them, and snatched Peter’s wand out of his hand before he even saw her properly reach for it.

He hadn’t expected her to be mad at _him_.

“Jesus, Peter,” she snapped. “The last thing I need is to be woken up by bloody screaming. Especially after the day we both had yesterday.”

Peter suddenly noticed she was wearing a silvery silk dressing gown that he’d never seen before. It had the look of a present. A present from _Bertie_. The realization made his stomach do backflips.

“At least you had only a bad _day_ ,” Peter snarled. “You weren’t plucked out of your own house without warning on Thursday afternoon and locked in a lousy break room until your mummy came to get you.”

“I felt plenty plucked out of my own house when a team of Aurors came knocking on my door, Peter. Telling me you’d been taken into protective custody, and I needed to come back to London to deal with your father’s mess.”

_(He’d been right about that, it seemed.)_

“Anna, there’s no need to get upset.” Bertie said gently, stepping closer and brushing her arm. “I’m sorry, Peter. I shouldn’t have been so offhand about everything. I’m just excited to finally get to meet you. Anna’s always talking about you, and I didn’t think I’d get the chance to know you any time soon.”

Peter knew his mother hated this sort of thing. The “don’t get upset,” and the gentle gesture that just meant “stop talking.” In the weeks after he found out she’d run away from his father, it was the only thing he’d been able to remember that had foreshadowed their separation.

And yet…

She didn’t jerk away from Bertie, or stiffen ever so slightly. She relaxed. She took a step back, closer to him. She even smiled a little.

_(Of course. It wasn’t the behavior she didn’t like. It was the person.)_

Peter stuck his hand out. “Can I have my wand back? Please.”

His mother considered the situation, then handed it over to him. “I’m sorry for snapping, dear. Bertie’s right. Why don’t you come to breakfast, and we can talk, and get caught up.”

“I don’t want to get caught up,” he said. “What is he doing here?”

His mother looked at him like he was mad. “Peter. You’re joking.”

“He didn’t have to come,” Peter said. “The Ministry just wanted you for questioning. Not him.”

Bertie shifted like he was about to mumble something, but Peter’s mother talked over him. “Bertie isn’t here for questioning,” she said. “He’s here because the Ministry made it very clear in Nice that I was going to need to stay with you indefinitely. And he didn’t want me to have to be here alone.”

“Oh, right,” Peter said. “Since I don’t count and all.”

His mother shook her head, sighing. “Of course you count, Peter. That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s what you said, though,” he replied. “You have your happy little life in Nice, just the two of you, and now you’ve got to come back and take care of your son. Who you never thought you were going to get stuck with again. God forbid you have to be alone with me.”

His mother was getting angry now. “Peter. Stop being so ridiculous. Bertie and I are _engaged_ , he’s not just going to kick around Nice by himself waiting for me to return, when you and I both know your father isn’t going to be coming back to Britain anytime soon. I imagine he gave you the ‘no extradition from America’ speech; he loved practicing it on me during our marriage whenever I got worried about something or other.”

_(So she did know something about it all. Did she tell the Ministry, or is she waiting until they find out on their own?)_

“Like it or not,” she continued, “I am your mother, and I’m here now to take care of you. That means Bertie is here too. You don’t have to get used to that today, but you will have to get used to it.”

“Am I going to have to get used to you being a bitch now too? Maybe I should have gone with Dad after all.”

Peter’s mom actually out-loud gasped, and Bertie’s face turned bright red.

_(Now why had he said that, of all things?)_

She managed to speak first. “Peter Arthur—”

But saying his middle name, his father’s name, seemed to strangle her, paralyze her with a different sort of rage.

Peter did the only thing he could do. He raced upstairs before either of them could start shouting, ran back into his room, and locked the door behind him.

No one came upstairs to demand he unlock it. That was fine.

* * *

Despite not being on proper speaking terms, Peter and his mother were clearly on the same page about the terms of his being grounded.

He stayed upstairs during the day, leaving his room only for trips to the loo. Breakfast (cooked by Bertie) and lunchtime sandwiches (his mother’s) appeared without fuss at the right times, but he was expected to come downstairs for dinner, which he ate sullenly without saying more than six or seven words before going back upstairs. Occasionally, one of them would walk past to check on him, making small talk as they passed along the letters from his friends he was opening but ignoring. Eventually, after trying to engage him for long enough, they gave up.

The fact of the matter was, he wasn’t as cross with either Bertie or his mother as he was with himself. But he wasn’t going to tell them that.

Being in a prison of his own making was better than being in that terrible break room, at least. He didn’t feel as much like crying, for one thing, and he had all his own stuff. But after a couple of days, even that was growing stale. And he was starting to feel like he’d made a mistake without knowing how to undo it.

His mother was downstairs. His mother. The woman who’d hugged him goodbye on Platform 9 and 3/4, then come home, packed her things, and left this house for what she’d thought was the last time.

Now his father was gone, and she was back. He should be thrilled. Not as much for his dad being on the run — for all the feelings Peter had about his father working with Death Eaters, he was still his _father_ — but he could be spending time with her. He’d been excited to see her only a week ago. Now she was here and he wanted her to be anywhere else.

_(How did that make sense?)_

Maybe it was Bertie down there. That was what had started the whole fight, to be honest. Bertie, downstairs, making breakfast like he was just going to be Peter’s fake dad now. Like they could just pretend none of the last decade and a half had ever happened.

But those years _had_ happened. Peter’s parents met, married, had him. Raised him in this house together for more than 11 years. Taught him to walk and kept their secrets and bought him his wand and fought when he wasn’t listening. Ran away with the Muggle next door the minute he got on a train headed northbound. Taken up with Death Eaters as soon as there was no one else to say no.

Peter wished some of that hadn’t happened. But they couldn’t change the past by pretending.

It was Wednesday when James mailed him the article from the _Prophet_. The note inside said that he and Sirius still didn’t know why he wasn’t responding, but if he wasn’t reading their letters, then he definitely wasn’t reading the paper. Peter couldn’t really understand James’s logic, but he was right, accidentally. His father had cancelled the _Prophet_ subscription after his mother left two years ago, and she didn’t seem to show any interest in renewing anytime soon.

Hard to blame her. From the tone of the letters he’d been reading from James, Sirius, and Remus, the surname he and his father shared had been in big letters on every front page since Sunday morning.

Ironically, it wasn’t in the headline James had gently folded into an envelope. That didn’t make it any better, though.

**UNFORGIVABLE! STEELE AN ALLEGED VICTIM OF IMPERIUS CURSE**

The Arthur Pettigrew affair continues to rock Wizarding Britain, with new testimony suggesting the former field agent for the International Magical Trading Standards Body may have acted alone, and used the Imperius Curse to compel his co-conspirators to work with him.

Pettigrew’s former boss, Phineas Steele, has claimed in a exclusive statement to the _Prophet_ that he has little to no memory of the past year, and believes Pettigrew placed the curse on him and his son Jasper to ensure his work with the Death Eaters went unchallenged.

“The scheme was Arthur’s all along,” Steele said. “Last spring, he came to me with a proposal for working with a number of anonymous individuals who later revealed themselves to be Death Eaters. They were seeking a way to get various items into the country with his help, and needed me to help cover up the transits. Naturally, I refused at once — but that is the last thing I remember doing with a clear mind.”

Steele has told Ministry officials he does not remember the identities of any Death Eaters who worked with him and Pettigrew during his time under the Imperius Curse. His youngest son and wife have corroborated this story, with Jasper Steele saying he remembers his father acting oddly after his graduation, and arranging a meeting with Pettigrew for a job that he similarly does not remember.

The nature of the Imperius Curse is such that it leaves little to no magical residue on its victims, but Magical Law Enforcement Head Harold Minchum says he does not disbelieve Steele’s tale at this time.

The accusations now put a life sentence in Azkaban into play for Pettigrew, though the Ministry will need to find him first. Minchum says that Aurors and Hit Wizards have now been dispatched internationally, and he believes—

Peter had read enough. He crumpled the article and tossed it toward the bin in the corner. He missed, of course, but he was too angry and stunned to pick it up.

_(There’s no way Dad did that. He wouldn’t. Steele must be lying to get out of Azkaban or something.)_

It was harder to convince himself of his father’s innocence than it used to be.

A noise outside startled him, and Peter went to the window. Through the thin curtain, he could see a pair of men in ill-fitting suits outside their front door, grumbling loudly as they rapped on the knocker.

_(Who the hell…_ )

“They’re reporters from the _Prophet_.”

Peter turned to see his mother standing in his doorway, a scowl on her face.

“Not doing a terribly good job of disguising themselves as Muggles, are they?” she asked. “The fat one thinks you’re supposed to wear a tie like a scarf.”

Peter went back to the window. Sure enough, one of the reporters had a garish red and yellow paisley tie wrapped about his neck, each end dangling down from his shoulders. Peter giggled a little at the sight, though his humor didn’t last long.

“They’re here about Dad.” Peter stepped away from the window, sitting somberly on his bed. “James just sent me the latest article from the _Prophet._ ”

His mum briefly glanced at the bit of newsprint crumpled on the ground, but didn’t pick it up. “I heard,” she said simply. “Friend from school owled me this morning. I’m all the more glad not to pay for the _Prophet_ , today.”

“Do you think it’s true?” he asked, loud as he dared say it aloud. “Do you think Dad…”

His mum didn’t answer right away. “Can I sit?” she finally asked. “We haven’t talked about your father yet, and I think… Well, we should talk.”

Peter just nodded, and she took a seat beside him on the bed.

_(Here we go.)_

“Your father…” she started, choosing her words with care. “To start off, Peter, no. I don’t think your father used the Imperius Curse on Steele, or his son. I’ve known Phineas Steele for more than a decade, and he’s never struck me as a man who would pass up a business opportunity. If your father came to him, asking for help with this venture, he would say yes, in a heartbeat.

“And I don’t really believe that’s how it went anyway. As long as I’ve known him, Steele’s been encouraging your father to branch out from his normal schemes — give up on magically shuttling Muggle records and paintings and god knows what else throughout the country. He’s the one who got Arthur involved, not the other way around.”

“So you’ve known the whole time,” Peter said. “That’s why you left.”

“No, that’s — it’s more complicated than that.”

“It doesn’t sound like it.” Peter didn’t have to fish his mother’s first letter out of the copy of _Learned Comments of Wisdom_ James had swiped out of the Cavern for him to remember what it said. “You said there were ‘truths’ you couldn’t tell me about. Things that weren’t safe to talk about.”

“They weren’t,” his mum replied. “All this smuggling, black market work — sure, the _Prophet_ may print trash about it not _technically_ being illegal, but it’s illegal in the Muggle world, and you can believe if anyone in Magical Law Enforcement decided to, they could bring him up on all sorts of charges. Breaches of the International Statute of Secrecy. Misuse of Muggle Artefacts. Even just tying him up in an internal affairs investigation would have jeopardized his ability to do his work, and then his Muggle contacts might have been willing to throw him under the bus with their government. The Ministry really doesn’t like having to rescue wizards from Muggle authorities.”

“So, what, you just got tired of hiding things for him? Decided I wasn’t worth staying for?”

“Peter,” she sighed. “I stayed years longer than I wanted to _because_ of you. But you’re in school nine, ten months out of the year now. I couldn’t justify staying. Not after Bertie.”

_(So it’s not about Dad at all. It’s about precious Bertie.)_

“And your father was already starting to suggest that he was going to finally take Phineas Steele’s advice,” Peter’s mother continued. “The summer before you went to school, he started asking me about all these people I knew in Slytherin. Chris Cloggs. Theodore Nott. Pamela Travers. People I had lost touch with largely because of what they had done with their lives. Who they were serving.

“Maybe it sounds silly to you, but… It was the straw that broke the hippogriff’s back. I knew he wouldn’t involve you in any of the business—” She paused for a minute, then course-corrected. “I _thought_ he wouldn’t involve you in any of the business. But I would have to be a part of it, if I stayed. He would want me to help him make these connections. Meet these…people. And I couldn’t do that.”

“So you just left,” Peter said. “And he did it anyway, without you.”

“Apparently,” his mother said. “I’d hoped that my leaving might convince him to stay out of it — that he would finally realize he’d crossed a line. If anything, it sounds like he was glad I was gone. One less person to serve as his conscience.”

Peter had known that his father at least outwardly felt that his mother’s departure was a blessing in disguise, but it was weird for her to say it too. These two people, his parents…they knew each other so well. And yet…

“At any rate,” she continued, “That’s what happened, as best I can put it together, and that’s what I told the Ministry when they asked. They already knew most of it, from what I could tell, though seems like they didn’t realize Travers was with the Death Eaters now. They knew about her brother, but not her. The only thing I didn’t tell them is where your father went.”

“So you know?!” Peter had suspected, but—

“Of course,” his mother replied. “He didn’t have a Portkey network actually set up when we were still married, as far as I know, but he was always talking about his escape plans even before he had any good reason to. The most important thing to him was always that he’d escape to a country that had bad relations with the British Ministry, one that wouldn’t send him back even if they knew he was there, and wouldn’t be happy with British Aurors crossing over — not that there’s anyone they can spare, with the war on. Now that the Egyptian Ministry has sorted things out with the rest of Europe, there’s only one good option.”

“America,” Peter said. “That’s where he said we were going, when he brought me back here.”

They fell silent then, both lost in thought.

_(Is she glad I stayed? Or does she wish I’d gone with?)_

He didn’t want to ask that question, so he let a different one fall out of his mouth, heedless of the consequences. “How long have you been with Bertie?”

But his mum just nodded, like she knew the question was coming. “We’ve been together five years, this coming spring. Off-and-on, of course, but…”

Five years. That meant his mother had been keeping a whole other life secret from him since he was nine. Two whole years of lies, before she upended their whole family.

“I don’t understand… What… How did you even meet him, mum? He’s a _Muggle_.”

“Well, that’s…”

And then his mother said something Peter had never expected.

“Do you remember the Davises?”

_(How could I not?)_

In an instant, Peter was back in the sitting room downstairs, nine years old, paralyzed with shock as their tea set floated about the table, trying to pour for the two very upset Muggles sitting across from his parents. Watching his father freeze them and the tea set with a single word. Hearing his mother laughing and crying at the same time, tucked in on herself in an armchair. All his fault, for playing with magic he didn’t understand.

“Our neighbors,” he said, trying to keep his memories from drowning him. “Old neighbors. They moved, finally, the year I went to Hogwarts.”

“So you remember the night your father had to—”

“Yes.”

His mother looked as though she didn’t know how much to tell him. “Well. You remember how upsetting that was. And how your father handled it. We’d been bickering a little more than usual that year — never over anything large, and never in front of you — but that sort of set things off for us. No matter what it was originally about, it seemed like every fight that winter and spring somehow circled its way back to that one night, with Sam and Libby Davis, whether he’d done the right thing or not. And I didn’t know how to stop fighting about it. Or if I even wanted to.

“One day — god, Peter, it was the most gorgeous spring day — your father and I were in the middle of a particularly bad row, a three-day simmering row, and so I sent you off to walk to day school on your own. And your father and I fought for an hour, maybe two. I remember he was even late to work, because I heard about it for the rest of the week.”

It had never occurred to Peter that the days he walked to school, his parents were fighting as soon as he was out the door.

“When he finally left, I did too. Straight out the door; I don’t think I even locked it. And I just went walking. Anywhere. Everywhere. I can’t remember a thing going through my head — I was probably just rehearsing what I was going to say later that night, when your father got home and you were in bed and we could scream at each other with a Silencing Charm on the door.

“Eventually my feet got tired, and I sat down at this little cafe. There were clouds starting to come in, so the handful of people there for lunch had all gone inside just in case. I didn’t care. I took a seat at one of the little tables outside, had the waiter bring me a cup of tea, and then paid for it and asked him to just leave me alone.

“And I sat there for… I don’t even know how long. Thirty minutes, maybe. And when I finished my tea, I just started crying, right there at the table.”

Peter bit his lip anxiously.

“I don’t even know what for. Everything, I suppose. The Davises, and fighting with your father, and not being able to figure out how I’d gotten to this place in my marriage where I didn’t have any power to fix anything. And maybe not even wanting to, anymore.

“I was just getting ahold of myself, pretending I was really interested in the cars passing on the street, when I heard this man talking over my other shoulder, asking me if I was alright.”

Peter understood. “It was Bertie.”

His mother practically beamed. “Probably a dozen men and women, maybe two dozen, had walked past me crying at that table and not batted an eye. I know I’ve done the same thing, not wanting to intrude on someone else’s misery. But Bertie — he was coming back from his lunch, and he saw me, and he stopped.”

She was crying a little now, a single tear slipping down her left cheekbone.

“I don’t understand why he stayed, honestly, because as soon as he asked me if I was okay I just burst into tears again, like a lunatic. But he did. He sat down across from me, and waited until I could breathe again, and then he asked me what was wrong.

“So I told him. Not about being a witch of course, but everything else — all of my frustrations with Arthur, all my feelings that I couldn’t say or do anything in my marriage, how lonely I was without any friends in the world who I could talk to.

“And at the end of it all, he asked me if we could meet here again for lunch the very next day. Because he thought not having a friend you could get lunch with when you wanted was the worst feeling in the world, and he didn’t want to be responsible for me feeling that way.

“I didn’t think I was going to do it, after he left. But I went home, and when your dad came in, we didn’t fight. Because I wasn’t actually angry at him about the Davises, I realized. I just wanted someone I could talk to. Bertie became that someone. So, the next day, I went to lunch.”

Peter didn’t know what to say. His mother was telling him about how she met the Muggle she left his dad for. They probably hadn’t started dating right away, but Peter could see how things had gone even without her explaining any further. They kept meeting, every day or every few days. Eventually, he convinced her to meet him at night, after he got off work, so she made up some excuse here or there and went.

He remembered, now, that in the years after the Davises, she had started telling him and his father about girls’ nights in the city, going out alone after dinner, not getting back for hours. She must have been meeting Bertie then. He’d suspected, after she left, but never known for sure.

And now, almost five years later, here they were. Everything was upside down. His father was the runaway. Mum and Bertie were here at home.

_(Not that this place really felt like home anymore.)_

“So anyway,” his mum said. “I think you can imagine the rest of it. The summer before you left for Hogwarts, Bertie gave notice at the shop where he’d been working, found a sublet for his flat. And on September 1, I came home from Kings Cross, told your father I was going out for groceries, and never came back.”

“Until now,” Peter said.

“Of course. Until now.” She looked unsettled to say it out loud.

_(It’s never going to go back to normal, you know. It can’t.)_

A thought suddenly occurred to him, and a wave of guilt with it. “So it’s all my fault then,” Peter said. “Not just getting caught with the record player, or refusing to run away with Dad. I was the one who undid the spell on the tea set in the first place. I started all of this.”

“No,” his mother said, turning his head so he could look directly into her eyes. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Peter. You’re just a boy. All of this — all of this is on your father. All those things you blame yourself for? He’s the actual person who set those things into motion. _He_ started working with the Death Eaters. _He_ made you that record player. _He_ Obliviated the minds of the Davises without a second thought, and made me feel like I was trapped in my own home. Not you.”

“But—”

“No buts,” she said, standing up and going to the window. “We’re not to blame for this, Peter. And we’re not going to spend the rest of our lives feeling bad for things out of our control, alright?”

He wasn’t sure he could agree with that sentiment, but he was distracted from having to think about it when his mother got up and went to the window, throwing it open and yelling down at the reporters.

“Oy!” she cried, as Peter got up to tentatively stand beside her. “You blokes want a statement?”

From where he was standing, Peter could just barely see the reporters nodding eagerly.

Then Peter’s mother drew her wand, pointed it through the window at the sky, and shouted “ _Imbernuit solare!”_

Peter rushed closer to the window as soon as she drew the wand, eager to see what she was doing to them.

The reporters had ducked for cover as soon as they saw the wand, but now they were looking up hesitantly, seeming surprised not to be newts or something. His mother’s spell seemed to have no effect at first…but then they and Peter saw the sky starting to darken, the clouds rolling in.

Within a few moments, the stormclouds had eclipsed the sun, blanketing the neighborhood in gloom. There was a single flash, a twin clap of thunder, and then a torrential downpour, centered right on their house.

_(Not the house. The reporters.)_

The two of them gasped in surprise, their ill-fitting Muggle suits instantly soaked straight through. The fat one with the scarf-tie started shouting something unintelligible up at the window, but the other grabbed his arm, saying something in his ear. With a look around at all of the Muggles in the neighborhood — all staring up at the sky in surprise and confusion, but none paying a lick of attention to any of them yet — the reporters took one last glare up at the window and then began shuffling down the street, presumably looking for someplace Muggle-free to Apparate back to their Diagon Alley offices.

As they left, the clouds shifted with them. Peter could already see a bit of sun again in the distance.

“Lousy weather we’re having,” his mother said, slamming the window shut. “Alright. I’m sick of foraging for whatever food is left in this house. I’m going downstairs to make a shopping list. Bertie and me are going to the store in a half-hour. You’re coming too.”

“What, why—”

“Because I said so,” his mother said. It looked suspiciously like she was taking pleasure in getting to use that excuse again. “This is a house, Peter, not a prison. And while I may not appreciate the way Bertie and I ended up back in Britain, I am certainly not going to sit around feeling sorry for all three of us. You’re not either.”

Her mood had turned on a Sickle ever since she’d dropped that little black raincloud on the _Prophet_ reporters. Peter wasn’t sure if he liked it.

“Who says I’m feeling sorry for you?” he muttered grumpily. “You ended up with everything you wanted, didn’t you?”

His mother’s mouth twisted, like she was hurt and proud all at once.

“I suppose I did,” she said shortly. “So I guess I’d better enjoy it then, shouldn’t I?”

When she left him alone, Peter went to the crumpled-up piece of newsprint on the ground and picked it up. He smoothed it out against the wall, rereading it one more time. Then he went over to Ringo’s cage in the corner.

“Hop on out, chum,” he said, swinging the gold door open. “I’ve got something new to line your tray with. And then you’ve got some letters to carry for me.”


	3. If I Fell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All good escapes-from-home-to-hide-at-your-best-friend's-house must come to an end.
> 
> Or, Walburga and Orion meet Fleamont and Euphemia.

It took everything in James not to get his wand and try to transfigure Sirius into a turnip when he started laughing at him.

“Knock it off, mate!”

They were sitting cross-legged on opposite ends of his bed, though Sirius looked to be in danger of falling off if he kept laughing so hard.

The whole situation was only slightly mitigated by the fact that James had known this was going to happen as soon as he put on the big, boxy brown glasses in front of him.

“What?” Sirius said. “I thought you wanted feedback?”

“I did want feedback,” James groused, ripping the frames away from his eyes. “Not your best impression of the Fat Lady drinking gigglewater.”

“Where’s the mirror?” Sirius said, looking around the room. “I want Remus to see how bad those are.”

James bit back his retort and looked down at the rest of the options laying on the bed between them. At least Sirius was having a good time. The only reason they were even doing this was because while they were sitting at breakfast with his parents last week, Sirius had been reading some story in the _Prophet_ about a mountain troll that got loose in the Pyrenees, and James had leaned over and almost-squinted at the paper. Almost!

But his protests were useless. He and Sirius had spent the rest of the day being quizzed on the increasingly tiny words his parents wrote in the air with their wands, his father talking the whole time about how he started wearing glasses when he was about James’s age. Sirius had done just fine, of course, but the instant James said “bludger” instead of “badger,” he could see in his father’s face that he was doomed. Fleamont had gone off to London the very next day, returning with a half-dozen sample frames for James to try on.

James had managed to put it off for a couple of days, but his mother had needled him about it quietly after breakfast, telling him that his father was excited to take him to get his first pair of glasses and he needed to stop acting like a mopey ghoul and pick one.

So here he was, sitting in his room, trying on what his father thought was cutting-edge teenage wizard fashion.

“All these options your dad picked out for you are horrible.” Sirius picked up a pair of half-moon spectacles. “Please pick these. I’d love to call you Gramps for the entire year.”

“Professor Dumbledore wears glasses like those,” James said, a bit wounded. He’d been half-considering those, actually.

“Yeah, mate, Dumbledore’s like a hundred years old. Okay, how about these?” He nudged a pair of gold-wire frames James’s way, and he gingerly unfolded them.

“I’m afraid I’m going to bend them in half,” James said, dubiously eying the thin metal arms before pushing them up the bridge of his nose. He looked up at Sirius and knew from a glance that this was a no as well.

“That was a bad call,” Sirius said immediately. “They clash with your hair, somehow. I didn’t even know glasses could do that.”

James groaned. “This is so stupid. How is it that no one has come up with a spell that can just fix your bloody vision without burning out your eyeballs?”

“Maybe that can be your ‘Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion,’” Sirius said. “You can add another mountain of Galleons to your family’s Gringotts vault and solidify the Potter family reputation for increasingly vain magical innovation.”

James was _so_ irritated Sirius had found out about Sleekeazy’s.

“Oh shut up. You’d be complaining twice as bad as me if you needed these.”

“Very true. You’ve got a much better face for spectacles than me. And they’ll be a good distraction from the state of your hair.”

“Shove off.”

James put on a pair of rectangular frames with a tortoiseshell pattern, and Sirius gave them a shrug. That was the best response he’d gotten so far, so he got up and went over to his full-length mirror to look at them for himself. Could be worse.

“How did you not realize you needed glasses anyway?” Sirius asked, as James studied his reflection. “Didn’t you notice, I don’t know, when you were trying out for the Quidditch team last year?”

“My vision’s not _that_ bad,” James said defensively. To tell the truth, it did explain how he’d missed one or two goals during tryouts. He’d just thought his vision was blurry from flying through the air so fast on his broomstick.

“Guess I shouldn’t complain about the extra Quidditch edge,” he said. A thought suddenly occurred to him. “You know, I bet they’ve got some wicked googles down at Quality Quidditch Supplies. When we go shopping for our schoolbooks…”

James trailed off. He’d veered very close to acknowledging the thing he’d done a very good job of avoiding for the past two weeks: that Sirius had effectively run away from home after causing a national incident, and his parents had been apparently content to leave him in the Potters’ home.

Neither of his parents had said anything about it the whole time, which was good. But they were going to have to talk about it eventually. It was just about August. Summer wouldn’t last forever. They were going to have to start working on their homework, go shopping for books in Diagon Alley, return to Kings Cross for the trip back up to Hogwarts.

James would be blissfully happy if Sirius could do all those things with him. But he had to be realistic. Eventually, the other shoe was going to drop. Based on everything Sirius had told him about Walburga and Orion Black, they weren’t just sitting at home wondering when their eldest son, the wedding-destroyer, was going to come strolling up the steps.

In the mirror, James could see Sirius behind him, a strange expression on his face. He needed to change the subject before things got weird.

“Do you think Peter is really okay?” he asked, taking the glasses off as he turned around. “I mean, I know he’s said he’s okay in every letter. But that seems sort of suspicious too.”

He couldn’t tell if Sirius was fooled by his conversational pivot, but his friend went with it anyway. “I mean, would you be okay? I mean, imagine your dad telling you he’s been working for the Death Eaters for more than a year. Then he legs it for America and leaves you with Euphemia and her new Muggle boyfriend.”

“It doesn’t help the _Prophet_ won’t stop writing stories about it,” James said. “I figured it would at least get moved to the inside pages by now, but I should have known better after they stopped describing it in detail and just called it ‘the Pettigrew Affair’ every time.”

“Can you believe this Bertie fellow doesn’t really like Muggle music?” Sirius said. “I mean, what’s the point of being a Muggle if you can’t listen to Muggle records whenever you want?”

James gave him a look. He couldn’t tell if Sirius was being sarcastic or not.

“Have you tried these yet?” Sirius asked, grabbing another pair of glasses off the bed. “They seem a little better than the rest of the lot.”

James walked over and took them out of Sirius’s hands. The frames were simple and black, with round lenses.

“Oh yeah, I don’t mind these,” James said, turning back to look at the mirror. “What do you think?”

Sirius was about to answer, but they heard James’s dad calling them.

“Boys! Would you mind coming down here for a moment?”

James and Sirius shared a look. The last time his dad had called them out of their room in the middle of the afternoon, it was to embark on an “impromptu organizational journey” in the sitting room.

“Think we can pretend we were in the attic and didn’t hear him?” James said.

“Maybe,” Sirius allowed, “but then we might have to clean the attic too.”

James couldn’t dispute that logic. So he set the glasses down on an endtable and followed Sirius out into the hall and down the steps.

“You know, assuming this doesn’t take forever,” James said, “do you want to see if my mum’ll let us go run around the neighborhood before dinner? There’s not much to see, and we’ll probably want to look out and make sure we don’t accidentally bump into Emory Greengrass or the Kingfisher twins, but—”

Sirius stopped dead in front of him, and James nearly barreled right into him.

“Merlin’s beard, Sirius, what are you—”

Then he saw them. At the other end of the hall, his parents were standing on opposite ends of the entrance door, his father holding it open with a stiff expression and his mother beaming with her fake smile. Between them was a tall, thin woman in a high-necked burgundy dress, wearing an obsidian brooch and a polite curl of her lips that looked as fake as his mother’s, and an imposing man half a foot taller than her who was the spitting image of Sirius.

Well, he supposed today was as horrible as any to meet his best friend’s parents.

“What—” Sirius finally stammered. “What are you—”

“Hello, Sirius dear,” Walburga Black said. “You look well-kept.”

James took two steps to get around and in front of Sirius. He wished he had his wand. “What are _they_ doing here?”

It was an obvious question, but it seemed to take his father and both of the Blacks aback, Walburga’s nostrils flaring dangerously as her dark eyes flicked his direction. Only his mother looked unsurprised — and, James suspected, slightly amused?

“James,” his father said, in a strange tone of voice. “These are Sirius’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Black. They’ve come for tea.”

——

The next fifteen minutes were the most harrowing James had experienced since the night he and his friends had been chased through the halls of Hogwarts by a pair of homosexual prefects — and frankly, he would have rather had Tom Gallagher and Nicholas Bulstrode show up at his parents’ doorstep.

It was probably for the best that his mother had asked him and Sirius to help her get the tea set from the kitchen while his father ushered the Blacks into the sitting room — Godric Gryffindor only knew what he might have said to Sirius’s parents next. But once they got out of earshot, his mother interrupted him the instant he opened his mouth.

“James, dear, I have the good biscuits in that cabinet there. Would you mind? Sirius, I assume your parents drink Earl Grey.”

Sirius made a sort of choking noise that must have been a yes. James shot him a glance, but his friend was just staring blankly at his mother as she started assembling teacups on a tray.

So he got the biscuits.

When the three of them came out into the sitting room, they found his dad and Sirius’s parents politely staring each other down from armchairs on opposite ends of the room, the couch in the center completely ignored. His mum didn’t say anything about it aloud — just crooked her eyebrow at Fleamont, set the tea tray on the table in front of the couch, and conjured herself another armchair next to him as the tea began serving itself.

There wasn’t anywhere else to go, so James and Sirius both sat on the couch next to each other. James tried to move as little as possible, except for nervously snatching his teacup out of the air so it would stop poking him in the shoulder.

No one seemed to want to be the first to speak, but finally his father broke the ice.

“It’s good to meet you both,” he said. “Sirius has just been a delight to have visiting.”

“That’s nice to hear,” Walburga replied smoothly. “He’s generally so well behaved in _other_ people’s homes.”

James clenched his teacup so tight he was afraid he might break it.

“I must thank you,” Walburga continued. She sounded as though she would rather do anything but that. “Not every witch or wizard would be happy to have a misbehaving child tumble out of their fireplace in the middle of the night. To offer to keep him for another two weeks is truly more generous than we ever would have asked.”

James and Sirius’s heads whipped around to look at Fleamont, whose face betrayed nothing. As far as James had known, his parents had taken Sirius arriving in their sitting room in stride. This was the first he’d ever considered they might have reached out to the Blacks secretly.

“Well, James and Sirius were both originally planning to spend a few weeks together in the country during their holiday,” his dad said smoothly. “It seemed clear that — given the circumstances of his arrival — asking if he might stay as long as he wished made perfect sense.”

“Asked” was clearly not what his parents had done in any letter they had sent, James suspected. He remembered coming down the morning after Sirius arrived, to find his dad looking over the _Prophet_ and asking him about the wedding. He’d known exactly what had happened there with Sirius, or almost-exactly. If he went to all the trouble not to let him and Sirius realize he was writing Walburga, there couldn’t have been even a chance that he was sending Sirius back any sooner than he had to.

“This was long enough,” Orion said, speaking for the first time. James could feel the tone of the room shift, slightly, but Walburga changed the subject quickly.

“I hope he behaved himself, at least,” Walburga said. “I’m sure you know raising your own boy how they can be at this age.”

“Oh, he’s been a perfect gentleman,” his mother said. “Truly, a delight to have in the house. I can’t imagine how you could want to go nearly a whole month without having him home.”

“Euphemia,” his father whispered, with a loaded look.

If Walburga heard the undertones, she pretended not to. “It’s so funny, isn’t it? How someone can behave one way amongst his people and another with strangers.”

James did not get the sense anyone in the sitting room found it funny in the slightest.

“I should hope we won’t remain strangers,” James’s dad said slowly. “James has been telling us the nicest things about Sirius the last two years, and it’s been very lovely to get to know him in person. In fact, it’s my hope that this won’t be the last time Sirius is allowed to join us out here in Godric’s Hollow.”

James saw Orion open his mouth to say something, but Walburga rested a single manicured nail on his wrist. “We shall have to see about that,” she said. “I prefer not to promise my children rewards until they’re well within range of earning them.”

“I should hardly think it would take much to earn the mere opportunity to visit his friends over the holidays,” James’s mother said. “Especially when they live together most of the year at school.”

“Would I could change that too,” Walburga snapped back. His mother gasped, a little, and Walburga seemed to realize she’d slightly overstepped.

Their parents were getting under each other’s skins, James realized. They were trying to be all grown-up and polite, but he got the sense social graces were the only thing keeping them from drawing wands and dueling in the back garden.

“I am so glad you were able to join us for tea,” James’s father said, his tone starting to sound forced. “I know this is a bit of a journey for you, from the city, but I had the instinct that it would be good to get to know the people raising Sirius, rather than just send him along through the Floo Network again. I’ve always been a big believer in following my instincts. Between marrying my lovely wife and taking a chance on founding Sleekeazy’s, I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.”

James normally cringed when his father brought up the company, but he was taking too much pleasure in the appalled expressions of Walburga and Orion as they simultaneously realized their son was consorting with the heir to a wizarding hair care empire. He would normally interject that his father had also sold the company years back, but he was strangely proud of his father’s potion-brewing prowess today. This was becoming a very unusual afternoon.

“It’s only too bad you didn’t bring your other son with,” Fleamont continued. “Regulus, is it?”

“There was no need to bring Regulus,” Orion said simply.

James was getting better at reading the undertones of this conversation, but every realization was more chilling than the last. His father wasn’t glad at all, of course — or if he was, it was only that he could see face to face what Sirius was facing upon his return home. And Orion’s comment about Regulus — well, that was how you talked about a Niffler you’d trained to pick other people’s pockets instead of your own. Not your own flesh-and-blood.

Next to him, Sirius was sitting stock-still, his eyes just darting back and forth between their parents as they took turns sparring over him.

“Perhaps some other time,” James’s father tried. “I hadn’t known Sirius even had a brother, until James mentioned it over Christmas. He’s in Slytherin, I believe?”

“Of course,” Walburga said, not even bothering to hide a venomous glare at Sirius. “All the members of our family have been in Slytherin for generations.”

“Except Sirius,” James’s mother said, leaning forward in her armchair combatively. “That’s what you meant, right?”

“Euphemia…”

“All the members of your family have been in Slytherin for generations, except Sirius.”

Walburga just smiled. James finally understood why Sirius always said he hated his mum’s smiles more than anything else.

“I think we must make our return to London now,” she said, setting her teacup aside. “You have been truly gracious to offer us such hospitality.”

“Yes, I think so too,” James’s father said, with a sidelong glance at Euphemia. “Sirius, is that alright? Do you and James want to go up and pack a bag?”

“He can’t have much here,” Walburga said, standing up and reaching for Sirius’s arm. “The boy arrived in nothing but his dress robes, for Merlin’s sake, it’s not as though—”

James’s dad stood, suddenly, and James had the sickening feeling that this whole teatime was closer to breaking into a brawl than he’d imagined.

“James,” his father said. “Would you please go upstairs with Sirius and pack a bag while we finish talking?”

James sprang to his feet immediately, but Sirius didn’t move. “C’mon, mate,” James hissed, tugging at his arm. “C’mon.”

Sirius got to his feet, slowly, and James practically dragged him out of the sitting room and up the stairs.

“Merlin’s beard,” James said, as soon as they were out of earshot. “What the hell was that all? Did you know my parents wrote to your parents?”

“No.” Sirius’s voice was flat and quiet. “Not surprised though.”

James stopped at the top of the steps and turned Sirius around to look at him. The other boy seemed to be going somewhere far away. He was scarcely moving, and his eyes were sinking toward the floor to look down at his stocking feet. This wasn’t his friend. This was some other person. This was a person who James couldn’t bear to send back to 12 Grimmauld Place, to live with the two people downstairs talking to his parents about what a disappointment he was.

So James gave him a good shove.

Awareness sprang back into Sirius’s eyes as he bounced against the wall, along with more than a little anger.

“Bloody snake guts,” Sirius said, shoving James back. “What was that for?”

“Oh good,” James said. “You are still in there.”

“What?”

“Sirius,” James said, looking straight at him. “You are not allowed to just… I don’t know what that was, but I didn’t like it. We knew your parents were going to come get you eventually. You know?”

“I guess,” Sirius said. “But—”

“No buts,” James said, more confidently now. “You are not going to just be sad and beaten down by those people, okay. You’re a Gryffindor! That means you’re better than the whole lot of them by default.”

“I guess…”

“No ‘I guess’ either!”

“Alright,” Sirius said, looking up at James. “I’ll try. It’s just… Well, now you know, at least. Now you know what they’re like, a little bit.”

“I do,” James said. “And I have to say, you did not do Walburga and Orion Black justice. Does your dad ever say anything that isn’t just mean for no reason?”

“Not really,” Sirius said with a smirk. “I mean, it’s sort of nice sometimes. At least he isn’t always in my business the way my mum is.”

“Yeah, she’s a real piece of work,” James said. “Wish my mum had properly gone after her.”

Sirius smiled for the first time since they had gone downstairs. “I would have loved to have seen that.”

“Maybe you’ll get your chance the next time you come to visit,” James said. “And there’s gonna be a next time, okay? I promise.”

Sirius looked as though he wanted to say something else, but he swallowed it back and just nodded. James pretended not to see the tears in his eyes.

“Come on,” James said, pushing Sirius ahead of him into their shared room. “Let’s get this over with.”

James hadn’t really been sure why his parents had insisted they go upstairs — other than, he hoped, so that that they could properly argue with Sirius’s stupid parents — but then he saw the small pile of sweets on the bed next to an empty rucksack and Sirius’s laundered dress robes.

Sirius split them between the bag and his pockets. “Can never be too careful with Walburga,” he said. “She might be on a ‘confiscate everything kick.’” The robes went in the bag on top, hopefully hiding the contraband, as did Sirius’s mirror, after some brief debate.

“It’s fine,” Sirius said. “I probably shouldn’t bring it in the house. Walburga might find it and then—”

“She might not!” James said, grabbing it and forcibly stuffing it deep into the rucksack.

“But you need to tell Remus—”

“Sirius.” James smacked his friend’s hand away from the bag. “If I want to talk to Remus, I’ll send him a bloody owl, alright? Who knows if you’ll even be allowed to _see_ your owl when you get back?”

The appeal finally worked, and Sirius even agreed to tell Remus what had happened as soon as he got a minute alone. It was probably a good sign that he was being so stubborn about this, even if it was really irritating.

“They’re going to be terribly cross,” Sirius said, picking up his wand. “You think they’re horrible right now, you’re mad. This is them putting on a pretend face for your parents.”

“I know that,” James said. “But in a month, we’ll be back at Hogwarts with Remus and Peter. No matter how bad it gets, you only have to last a month.”

“I suppose.”

“And hey,” James added, “if it gets really bad… You can always come back, you know?”

“Ha, ha,” Sirius replied, slinging the bag over his shoulder and starting for the door.

“Mate.” James stepped in his way. “I’m serious.”

“I’m ‘Sirius’ too.”

James nearly clocked him.

“James, my parents probably went ballistic when I came here,” he continued. “If I came back—”

“Nope,” James said. “Not an excuse. Your mum was trying to _hex_ you, Sirius. All because you found out your cousin was casting Unforgivable Curses on Muggles. And you’re worried they might be mad at you if you run away again.”

“Well—”

“Look,” James said. “I know that you will put up with a lot from your parents before you come back here. A lot more than you should, probably. But I am just telling you that you can, Sirius. If you need to, you can. Any time, day or night. You’re my best mate, okay?”

Sirius finally gave in. “Okay,” he said. “I promise. If it gets really bad, I’ll come back here. Satisfied?”

“Yes,” James said. He got out of the way, and Sirius went past him, leading the way down the steps.

The four of them were all standing in the front hall when they got to the ground floor. Sirius’s dad looked exactly the same, but the other three were all red in the face. They couldn’t have been shouting — they would have heard them upstairs, and even if they’d put up a Silencing Charm, his dad would be dripping with sweat if they’d actually started yelling.

But they’d been close to it. Very close.

“Wonderful,” Walburga said as they approached. “Say goodbye, Sirius.”

Sirius looked over at James’s parents shyly. “Goodbye, Mr. and Mrs. Potter. Thank you for letting me stay with you.”

James’s mother enveloped Sirius in a big hug before either of the boys knew what was happening. His mum was not that big of a hugger. But James had the sneaking suspicion she was trying to prove something to Walburga.

“Goodbye, dear,” she said. “I’ll send some of that nice tea you like back to Hogwarts with James. You must be able to get ahold of a kettle there, right?”

“Err, probably?”

“Goodbye, Sirius.” His father extended his hand to Sirius, clasping the other over it as they shook. “You stay out of trouble. Unless you’ve got a very good reason not to.”

James watched Walburga and Orion both glare openly at his father.

“I’ll try,” Sirius said, looking back at James. He seemed half-bewildered by the affection, half-delighted.

Walburga reached an arm over Sirius’s shoulder to steer him away from James’s parents and push him toward the door. “Farewell,” she said, without looking back.

A few moments later, they were gone. As if Sirius Black had never come to Godric’s Hollow at all.

——

The instant Sirius Black’s feet touched the floorboards, he knew it was going to be bad.

“The study,” his mother snapped, shaking her arm loose from his. “Go. Now.”

Sirius went.

It was a deviation from form, for Walburga. His mother usually just chewed him out right there in the moment. His father too. The only time Sirius could remember ever being commanded to stand attendance in the study had been right before he’d left for his first year at Hogwarts, when Walburga had forced him to listen to a three-hour history of the Noble and Ancient House of Black, just so he was sure to know how important it was that he carry on the family name with dignity and honor.

He felt he’d done a pretty good job so far, to be honest, but he could certainly see how his mother’s opinion might be different by this point in time.

He took the stairs as slowly as he dared, going up to the second floor. There was silence below — his parents had made no move to follow him up the steps — and equal silence above. His brother was either out, or confined to his room so as not to interfere with his punishment.

It was normal for the study door to be closed. Grimmauld Place could be surprisingly drafty, even in the summer. But Sirius still opened it slowly, as if a Welsh Green was lurking within to devour him.

No such luck. The room was empty and dark, the curtains drawn tight enough to let only a little sunlight through. Sirius made no move to open them as he sat in a stiff-backed chair at the center of the room. Who was he to ruin even this terrible aesthetic.

Sirius had never cared much for his parents’ study. It had always been Regulus’s refuge — a small room with a big desk that he always loved sitting in and pretending to be a grown-up — but it had always seemed dull and drab to Sirius, and it was pinned between a toilet, the main stairwell and his parents’ bedroom. The only bit of it he’d liked was the small spiral stair tucked in the corner behind a trick wall, leading down to the billiards room a floor below, but his father had finally sealed it up one winter after Sirius had snuck up it to startle Regulus one too many times.

As he sat there, waiting, he looked over at the corner panel. It was one of four dark Romanesque columns planted in the corners of the room, completely opposite to the rest of the decor. Maybe one of the others concealed another staircase, one that could carry him into a secret chamber where he could hide, counting the days until September 1.

Maybe he was being too generous in thinking that stuffing him in a dark cubbyhole wasn’t Walburga’s plan to begin with.

But he didn’t have to wait long before he heard his mother’s footfalls on the stairs. She closed the door firmly behind her as she entered, and wordlessly sat behind the desk.

Most of the time, when Walburga was upset with him, she told him right away, in a handful of sentences ending in a punishment. Sirius didn’t know what to make of this “go to the study” business. But if experience had taught him anything, he needed to try and cut off whatever she was going to say if he had any chance of making it out of this with his skin intact.

“Look,” he said, mind racing. “I know what happened at the wedding… I shouldn’t have done that. I mean, I needed to do something. I don’t know if Regulus told you what I told him, about the Muggles, about the Imperius Curse. But I saw them. Bella. Rodolphus. The whole wedding party. They had stolen the wedding venue from the Muggles who were supposed to be getting married there. So I had to do something. Blowing up the wedding cake wasn’t the smartest idea. But I panicked. I couldn’t find Uncle Al, and Regulus didn’t believe me, and honestly I figured you wouldn’t believe me either, and the only thing I knew was that if I made a big fuss someone from the Ministry would come out and fix everything. I know it probably embarrassed you, in front of all the other pureblood families. I know that you don’t understand why I had to do anything at all. But I did. If I didn’t… This is who I am, okay? And I can’t just turn it off. I wish I could, sometimes. But I don’t feel that way about what I did at the wedding. I’d do it again. I know you’d be just as mad at me as you are now, but I’d do it again.”

Sirius was almost out of breath, when he was done. He couldn’t remember saying that many words in a row to his mother in years. Maybe not ever.

And she hadn’t even moved. Scarcely blinked. Walburga just sat there, taking it in, watching Sirius pour his heart out to her like he never had before.

Then, when he was done, she said three words, and Sirius’s stomach dropped three stories.

“Are you finished?”

It was then that Sirius realized this was going to be a very different sort of row.

He stammered something — even he didn’t know what — and Walburga leaned forward, staring him down across the desk.

“Let me clear your guilty conscience,” she said dryly. “As far as your father and I have been able to tell, no one at the wedding knows, or even suspects, that you were the cause of the… catastrophe. Your little diversions did their duty, and everyone was paying more attention to the exploding wedding cakes and screaming tables than anything you were doing. So you can set aside your extremely minimal feelings of guilt about causing any more embarrassment to our family than you already have.”

That did not sound like the beginning of a good conversation.

“But the fact remains that you broke our deal, Sirius.” Walburga continued. “You may have come to Bellatrix’s wedding, but just because you didn’t _actually_ shame our family doesn’t mean you couldn’t have. You threatened everything — our whole future — for a couple of Muggles who you felt were being mistreated.”

Sirius bit back the three retorts that popped into his head. Whatever Walburga was going to do to him, it would be worse if he said any of them. But it was unbearably hard to sit there, silently, and let his mother tell him that the people he’d seen being tortured by Bellatrix and her new husband didn’t matter.

“I suppose,” Walburga said, “I should appreciate that you are finally being honest with me. Telling me that you have no interest in changing your behavior. Because _I_ will be honest with _you_ , Sirius, when you agreed to behave yourself a year ago — keep your head down, attend the Lestrange wedding, and stay in the background — I never truly believed you would do any of that. I just wasn’t willing to give up the chance I might have misjudged you.

“I am at my wits’ end, Sirius. I raise you properly, to respect our pureblood heritage and lead our family into the next generation. You fight me at every turn, and the first moment you’re out of my sight, end up in _Gryffindor_.”

His mother spat the word out like it was venom she’d sucked from a wound.

“A terrible, terrible scandal — and yet, I decide to take a step back. I cannot change the Sorting Hat’s decision, but I can adapt to it, focus on Regulus, trust that you will understand the embarrassment you have caused our family and keep to yourself.

“Inaction is as ineffective on you. You choose the most appalling friends and are more obstinate than ever back home. So I decide you must be brought back into the fold, little by little, since that seems to be what you want anyway. And _this_ is now you repay me! Scandal upon scandal, destroying Bellatrix’s wedding, running away to your blood traitor friend’s home, and leaving me to clean up your mess all over again.”

She stopped, suddenly, studying Sirius, thinking. And then she said something that honestly surprised him.

“Help me understand,” Walburga said, her haughty facade cracking just a little. “How is it that we spent all this time raising you, trying to teach you to be the proper son we want you to be, and you resist us at every turn? Regulus has turned out just fine, with only a little coddling, and yet you — you who are the rightful heir to the Black family line, the oldest son in your generation — you are unrecognizable to me, Sirius. It should no longer be a surprise that you disobey, that you lash out and hurt our family’s name and reputation. And yet somehow, you still do surprise me, one disaster at a time.”

She really wanted an answer, Sirius realized. This was where they were at. His mother had called him into the study to see if she could get a straight answer as to why he wasn’t the perfect Slytherin she wanted him to be.

“I don’t… know what to say,” Sirius said. “I don’t know why I’m this way. I don’t know why I’m different. But you can’t change who you are either. You, Dad, Regulus… I wouldn’t ask you to be more like Gryffindors. I wish you were. Desperately. Maybe if you were, you would understand why I needed to do whatever it took to help those poor Muggles.”

His mother just looked back at him, the closest Sirius had ever seen her to looking sad. “I suppose… I should have expected you to say something like that, shouldn’t I?”

They were at a stalemate. Both of them clearly knew it. So Sirius also knew what was coming next.

His mother seemed to collect herself, and glared at him again. “I don’t see the value in belaboring this point any more. Obviously, you’ll be confined upstairs for the remainder of the summer.”

“What? You can’t—”

“No going out,” she continued. “No meals with the family. No trips down to the library. No writing to your friends. If you need something, you are to send Kreacher for it.”

“Kreacher sucks bloody eggs,” Sirius spat back. “You can’t just lock me away in my room and pretend I don’t exist.”

“I think you’ll find I can,” Walburga replied. “And if you continue to dispute your punishment with me, you will find that there are a number of alternate methods I can use to keep you in your room other than just commanding you to be there.”

Sirius stood up with a jolt, kicking his chair backward as he did. He’d never wanted to hex someone so badly in his entire life. “Well, I guess I’d better go upstairs and imprison myself, then. Before you have to resort to ‘alternate methods.’”

His mother didn’t reply, so Sirius muttered a curse under his breath and wrenched the door open, nearly slamming it back against the wall.

But as he passed through the door frame, he froze for a moment, building up the courage to ask a question he already knew the answer to. “I don’t suppose you know what happened to them?” he asked, not even looking at Walburga. “The Muggles that Bellatrix and Rabastan put under the Imperius Curse?”

“The Ministry took care of all that,” his mother said, without a second of hesitation. “I had other things to worry about.”

“Yes,” Sirius said. “I suppose you did.”

——

“I don’t understand,” James said, staring his parents down across the dining room table. “Why did you tell Walburga she could come and get Sirius? And why were you writing to her in the first place?”

James’s parents shared a look.

“Well,” his father started, “despite the… circumstances of Sirius’s departure… We had to at least write to Mr. and Mrs. Black, James. To tell them he was here.”

“Not that the two of them would start a national manhunt for him.”

“Euphemia.”

During tea, it had quickly become obvious that both his parents found Walburga and Orion Black unpleasant, but only his mother had carried the opinion forward after the fact. His father was trying to keep his frustration hidden below the surface. He wasn’t particularly good at it, but by comparison to the woman who’d called Walburga a “miserable hag” under her breath without even waiting for James to get out of earshot…

“But you knew what happened to him,” James said. “His mother was the one who was chasing him down the hall, shouting all those terrible things and trying to hex him.”

“James, believe me,” his father said. “I have a very good measure of Mr. and Mrs. Black’s characters. I’ve known many of their social companions for years, including the Lestranges.”

“Then why did you let them take him back?” James said, slamming his hands down on the table. Maybe he was acting childish, but he didn’t care.

“James, dear,” his mum reached across the table and took his hand in hers. “We didn’t have a choice.”

Admittedly, James had not thought of that.

“We wrote to the Blacks and told them that Sirius had arrived here. And that he would be staying with us for a while so that they could get their house in order,” his mother continued. “We didn’t ask them. We told them.”

“But we knew,” his dad said, “that eventually they were going to want him to come back home.”

“Why?” James asked. “They hate him. They treat Sirius like getting sorted into Gryffindor is like committing murder. And even before then — the stories he tells us about growing up…”

“I can imagine,” his father said. “You know, James, many of the original investors in Sleekeazy’s were pureblood families just like the Blacks. Think of the Greengrasses, or the Fawleys. So I know a fair amount of what kind of pressure Sirius is under, to live a certain way and follow arbitrary rules. It’s part of the reason your mother and I decided that we were not going to raise you that way, with the wrongheaded notion that being a pureblood puts you in a different class than the rest of the wizarding world. Or that there’s anything you could do that would change the way we feel about you.”

“Well, that’s great for me, I guess,” James said, scornfully. “Too bad Sirius isn’t so lucky.”

“James.” His mother looked miserable, the way she said his name. “They’re his parents. We can’t keep him here against their will. If he was of age, we could talk about other options, but—”

“So that’s it then,” James said. “My best friend goes back to live with his terrible parents, and I just… go on with my summer holidays like it never happened. Do absolutely nothing for him.”

“That is not what we’re saying,” his dad replied. “Look, James — Sirius was in a rough situation a couple weeks ago, and we gave him the opportunity to get away from his parents, and relax, and be in a good, safe place. And now, for the rest of the summer, you two can write letters and keep in touch that way, until you go back to school in September. That’s not nothing.”

“It feels like nothing.”

James’s mum stood up and came around the table to put her arms around him. “I know it does, dear. I know.”

——

Sirius imagined he would feel worse about being confined to his room if the alternative wasn’t having to spend time with his family.

It had been almost three weeks since he’d returned to 12 Grimmauld Place, and the only blood relation he’d seen in that time was Regulus, when they passed each other on their way to and from the loo. There was always a guilty look in his little brother’s face, but he never said a word to Sirius. Walburga must have given him quite the lecture downstairs.

He’d had himself a few good cries about that the first few days, but after a while, he got used to the isolation. Kreacher showed up with three meals a day, so Sirius could always curse him out for a few minutes before he would return to the kitchens with a sudden pop. He couldn’t use Diana to send messages — Walburga had padlocked her cage shut, the vicious old bat — but she couldn’t keep his friends from sending their own owls to his window. And he could talk to Remus whenever he needed, though he tried not to bother him too much.

He was in the middle of their usual midday conversation when the tapping on the window started.

“I know I _can_ go downstairs while they’re out to Diagon Alley, Remus, but I’m just saying that — oh, hang on.”

Sirius looked up from the two-way mirror to see a ruffled brown owl hovering out his window, pecking incessantly on the glass.

“Give me a sec, Remus; Peter’s owl is over at the window.”

“Alright, but don’t just throw the mirror down because you know it makes me feel sick when—”

Sirius tossed the mirror onto the bed and rolled neatly off the edge, crossing to the window and quickly throwing it open. Ringo looked relieved to have a perch, and began chirping at Sirius as soon as he took the letter out of his talons.

“I’m sorry, mate,” Sirius said, gingerly petting it. “I don’t have any treats for you today. I brought everything up to my own owl already.”

Ringo didn’t seem as put out as Peter would be if Sirius had told him there were no snacks. He let Sirius rub around his ears for a moment, and then took off in a flurry, headed back across town.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Sirius said, picking up the mirror and sitting back down against his pillows.

“It’s fine,” Remus replied. He looked a bit grumpy and nauseous. Maybe he wasn’t just being dramatic about the throwing-the-mirror thing. “What did Peter write you?”

Sirius was already splitting the seal with his thumbnail, and he skimmed through the letter line-by-line. “Oh, you know. The usual stuff. Bertie did some normal thing he hates. He and his mum got in another spat. Knows how I feel about being trapped in my own house — not bloody likely, that.”

“He didn’t mention the article the _Prophet_ ran, did he?” Remus asked. “They’d given up on his father for a while…but just yesterday there was a piece on the front page. Big, splashy, two-page story all about how nothing new’s been discovered. They’re just trying to sell papers at this point, I expect.”

Sirius looked at the letter again. “No, nothing about that. He must know, though?”

“I doubt it,” Remus said. “I haven’t been sending him clippings, and I told James not to either. Unless his mum’s changed her mind, I imagine there isn’t a scrap of newsprint left in that house.”

“Well, they’re going to have to get sick of it eventually,” Sirius said. “Or something else big will happen. Maybe I should sneak out of the house and cause another breach of the International Statute of Secrecy.”

Remus laughed. “No, I think you’ve broken wizarding laws enough times this summer, Sirius. Peter’ll be okay. September 1 is only a fortnight away.”

“And believe me,” Sirius said, “if you think I’m not counting the days, you’re as batty as a Hungarian vampire.”

There was a sudden tapping at the window again.

“Hang on, there’s another owl at the window,” Sirius said. “It’s like Kings Cross today with all this—”

When he looked up, his jaw dropped.

His Uncle Al was floating outside his window, four stories up, waving his hand and smiling wide.

“Greasy Gobstones,” Sirius gasped.

“What is it?” Remus shouted from within the mirror. “Is something happening? Are your parents home?”

“No, uh…” Sirius looked back and forth between Remus and Alphard. “Remus, uh, I’ve got to go. My uncle’s here. The nice one.”

“Here?” Remus said. “What do you mean ‘here’? Aren’t you under like total house arrest?”

“Listen, I’ll catch you up later, okay?”

Sirius didn’t wait for Remus’s reply — he just wiped his hand over the surface of the mirror, and then tucked it into the pocket of his trousers as he rushed over to the window.

“Uncle Al?” he shouted, before he even got to the glass. “How the hell are you doing that?”

He got his answer before his uncle could respond. Through the window, he could see that Alphard was sitting crosslegged on a gorgeous woven rug of purple and maroon. It undulated ever-so-slightly in mid-air, tassels fluttering in the breeze.

“Let me in, lad,” his uncle said as Sirius opened the window. “My legs are starting to go numb, and if I slip off while I’m trying to stand up this thing’ll let me fall at least a story or two before it decides to catch me.”

And then, with as little fanfare as if he’d come to the front door, Alphard Black stepped off his flying carpet and into Sirius’s bedroom.

“Merlin’s beard, it’s been a long time since I’ve been in here,” he said, taking in Sirius’s disheveled prison. “Didn’t you use to have a nice set of toy Aurors?”

“Yeah, when I was a kid,” Sirius said. “Mum took them away when I was 7 after I asked her why I wasn’t allowed to talk to any of our Muggle neighbors and forgot to give them back.”

“Shame,” Alphard said, continuing his survey of the room. “I was always a little envious of those.”

“Uncle Al. What are you doing here?”

“Oh, right!” His uncle quickly collected himself, then spun to extend a hand toward the window, his robes fanning outward with a flourish. “Hop aboard, Sirius! I’m busting you out for the afternoon.”

“What?” This was starting to feel like a trap. “You can’t ‘bust me out.’ I’m grounded. Like, tremendously grounded. Like, I’m not allowed to leave this floor, grounded.”

“Cygnus told me your mother told him that you’re not allowed to go downstairs,” Alphard countered. “You won’t be going downstairs. That’s why I brought the carpet.”

“But they just left for Diagon Alley a half-hour ago,” Sirius said. “They’re buying school supplies for me and Regulus. I don’t know when they’ll be back.”

“I know,” his uncle said. He pulled out his wand and wordlessly locked Sirius’s bedroom door from the inside. “I’m here _because_ Regulus and your parents are going to be in Diagon Alley all day. That means we can be somewhere else for a while.”

“But the house elves—”

“Brutus!”

The house elf popped into the room perfectly on command. Brutus was one of the less unpleasant house elves his family kept, a gnarled old thing whose ear had memorably fallen off at his father’s 40th birthday party.

“Oh, hello, Master Alphard!” the elf shouted. “Brutus didn’t know you’d be coming by!”

“Bit of a surprise,” he said, winking at Sirius. “Brutus, old chap, Sirius and I are going to sit up a while and visit. Would you let the rest of your industrious fellows downstairs know he shouldn’t need lunch or dinner today? I’ll whip something up for us myself, so you won’t need to come up to check on him.”

Brutus looked terribly confused. “Of course, Master Alphard, but our mistress says—”

“My sister knows about all of this,” Alphard lied smoothly. “No lunch, no dinner.”

“Well, maybe dinner,” Sirius interjected quickly. “But, uh, later. I’ll call you when I’m hungry? After Uncle Al leaves?”

Alphard gave him a subtle thumbs up and a smile.

“As you wish, Master Sirius.”

“That’ll be all, Brutus,” Alphard said. “Good to see you again. Glad the other ear’s hanging on.”

“Yes, yes,” the house elf said. “Better at stitching with the right hand, Brutus is.”

Luckily, both he and his uncle managed to keep their laughter held in until Brutus had gone again.

“Alright,” Alphard said, “come along. The day’s a-wasting.”

And despite the madness of it all, Sirius went.

His hair rustled in the wind as they soared away from 12 Grimmauld Place, the carpet rising high above the rooftops. His uncle gave the carpet no directions aloud, but it seemed to know where it was headed. As Sirius stared about him in amazement, the carpet steered them between houses, and soared over wide, verdant parks.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Alphard said, mirroring Sirius’s giddy grin. “Have one of these, all the other sorts of wizarding travel start to feel a bit mundane.”

It had never occurred to Sirius that he might like flying. He and Regulus had been given the best broomsticks growing up, of course, but in the middle of the city there was nowhere to use them. His Cleansweep 6 had gotten a tiny bit of exercise whenever Walburga and Orion would drag them out to the countryside to visit relatives, and Sirius had let James convince him to bring his broom to school for tryouts last September. But those moments had been few and far between, and none of them were separated from the sport of Quidditch — which Sirius had never truly loved.

This was something different. This was the thrum of energy from picking up his wand, mixed with the fizz of Butterbeer and the satisfaction of a good Christmas dinner, all at 90 miles an hour.

Nice didn’t begin to sum it all up.

“This is amazing,” Sirius said. “How come you never told me you have a flying carpet?”

“Honestly?” Alphard replied. “I knew you’d want to ride it. Figured I needed to wait until you were old enough to sit still, no matter how excited you were.”

That was a good point. Sitting beside his uncle, Sirius could feel the tug of something holding him tight against the carpet — but he wouldn’t want to try standing up or moving about while the carpet was racing at full speed.

“Besides,” Alphard continued, “I don’t take it out as much as I used to. Sort of frowned upon, in this country.”

“Oh yeah,” Sirius said, half a memory jostling loose. “I think we read about this in History of Magic… Aren’t these things illegal in Britain?”

“Absolutely,” his uncle replied, without an ounce of concern. “Have been since I was a kid, maybe further back. But they’re terribly easy to ship in, if you know the right guy.”

For a moment, Sirius’s stomach lurched, thinking of Peter’s father.

“They’re much better than broomsticks, though,” Alphard continued. “More comfortable, obviously. You can actually stick a Disillusionment Charm to the bottom without worrying about it slipping off if you go too fast. And as long as you don’t cheap out, they’re about as smart as your wand. You can have a nice conversation with your fellow passenger without worrying you’ll end up in Eastwick instead of the East End.”

“Aren’t you, you know… Worried about getting caught? Since it’s illegal and all?”

Alphard laughed. “Oh, I’ve been caught by Ministry watchdogs loads of times, lad. It’s only invisible from the bottom, you know, and it’s not like we’re the only wizards in the sky.”

Sirius looked at him, incredulous. “Then how do you—”

“Usually,” his uncle said, smiling as he stroked his beard, “I tell them I’m Nicolas Flamel, the famously ancient discoverer of the Philosopher’s Stone, and my carpet’s grandfathered in.”

Sirius snorted with laughter. “Does that actually work?”

“Oh, no. Never,” he replied. “But then I just give them a nice bribe and go on my way.”

Sirius didn’t know if his uncle was joking or not, but before he could ask, the carpet shifted beneath them, descending sharply into an alleyway.

“Oh, looks like we’re just about here,” Alphard said. “Give me a moment to get things settled when we land, Sirius, and then we’ll set forth.”

Sirius looked around quickly before the midday shade of the alley cut off his vision. They had gone west from Islington, he knew that much, but they weren’t out in the country yet. Wherever they were, the local painters must have been colorblind; each consecutive house popped with a uniquely offensive pastel shade. He reached out as they slowed down to fleck a bit of pea green off the side of a flat.

“Where are we?” he asked. “Walburga’s never taken us to this part of London.”

“I should say not,” Alphard said, amusement tickling his words. “Why, I say there’s not a single wizard of any decent breeding or heritage for 10 miles on all sides. Plenty of indecent ones, of course, and more Muggles who _think_ they’re wizards than you can shake a wand at, which is just delightful.”

As they stepped off the carpet, Alphard drew his wand from up his sleeve and waved it lazily downward. “Alright, hold still, old chap.”

Sirius thought his uncle was talking to him until he saw the carpet stiffen, blanketed by a hazy green glow as his uncle muttered something long and Latin under his breath. Then, before his eyes, the whole thing seemed to melt down into the pavement below, eventually settling into the stones themselves like a child’s chalk drawing.

“Wicked,” Sirius said. He bent down and brushed his fingers along the ground, half-expecting them to be covered with a bit of dusty carpet.

“Come on, lad,” Alphard said. Sirius looked up to see he was already on his way out of the alley. “Lots to see out there.”

As his uncle slipped around the corner and out of sight, it occurred to Sirius that the two of them were radically unprepared for interacting with Muggles. At least he was wearing a simple gray shirt and dark trousers, though he knew the nice shoes he was wearing were nothing like the trainers Muggle kids his age were wearing, if the images he saw in magazines were any indication.

His uncle, on the other hand, was wearing a long, light grey trench coat, a dress shirt with a _bow tie_ , and bright blue knickers.

“Uncle Al!” he shouted, hurrying around the corner. “Don’t you think—”

He needn’t have worried. When he turned the corner, Sirius thought for an instant that his uncle had actually taken him to Diagon Alley after all.

The street in front of him was filled with more than his eye could take in — Muggles, merchants, rickety stalls piled high with bric-a-brac. Wares were being hawked from both the near and far side of the street, and he could see that the Muggles were wearing all sorts of different clothes, from formal coats and dresses to workmanlike shirtsleeves and blouses, each heedless of the other’s fashion choices.

And the noise! There were maybe 50, 75 people in front of him, the amount he’d expect to see on a busy trip to Diagon Alley, but there most of those people were trying to keep their business to themselves, and the only shouting came from children, animals and maybe the occasional browser who got too close to one of the biting books at the corner of Knockturn. Here, most everyone he could see was shouting and haggling about something — grownups! Shouting at each other in broad daylight, either for the fun of it or just to be heard over the clamor.

Ahead of him, Alphard was contributing to the cacophony, trying to convince an old woman to let the two of them past her stand. It looked to be filled with — of all things — a variety of spittoons, in 17 colors.

“Ma’am—”

“Bloody hell you think you’re doing sneaking up on me like that? G’back. I’ve been sellin’ for thirty-five years and never—”

“Ma’am.”

“—never has anyone been so rude even on a Saturday. Call a bobby, I should, straighten you out, turn out your pockets to be sure—“

Alphard turned to look at Sirius, raised an eyebrow as if to say “I tried,” and then flicked his wand in and out of his sleeve in one simple movement. The far right leg of the stall exploded in a puff of sawdust, sending half of the ceramics tumbling into the thoroughfare in front of them.

“Mah wares!”

As the woman threw herself onto the table to grab as many spittoons as she could, and passersby began to jump back and curse, Alphard slipped through the other side of the stall, beckoning Sirius to follow. He obeyed, calling out a quick “sorry” as the two of them merged into the swiftly passing crowd.

“That,” Alphard shouted, as Sirius hurried up to walk beside him, “seems like as good an introduction as any to Portobello Road.”

Sirius quickly realized that the disorder and confusion of the street — intentional or otherwise — was intended to be part of its charm. No two stalls seemed to be selling the exact same thing, though most of it looked like it had been dragged down out of an attic. As they walked, Sirius saw before him a man selling silver spoons, another with three double-sided racks of dusty books, a woman with sickly-looking vegetables and a third man getting in an argument about the price of a brass serving platter, all in a row. And that was just to his right.

He was relieved to see that his uncle’s clothing choices hardly looked out of place, in all this chaos. Alphard wasn’t even the only one wearing an overcoat, though the other man appeared to be a vagrant, from the state of his clothing and the way the women eyeing dingy tea sets flinched away from him as he passed by. As long as he’d laundered them first, his uncle probably could have been wearing his wizard’s robes, and no one would have said a word.

“Is it like this every day?” Sirius asked, trying to be heard over the ruckus.

“It’s a little busier today since it’s Saturday,” Alphard admitted. “But yes, this place is a real gem. You know I’ve furnished something like a quarter of my manor from things I’ve picked up here. Diagon Alley has a lot going for it, but I prefer antiques that don’t bite. I’m just odd like that.”

Over the course of the afternoon, Alphard led him from one stall to another, occasionally stopping to haggle with one merchant or another. To Sirius’s initial surprise, his uncle seemed to have plenty of Muggle money close at hand, and it seemed his tale of being a frequent visitor was true. He knew how to barter with the antiques women, some of whom seemed to even recognize him as he approached. No matter what he bought — an aquamarine teapot, a 8-inch-high brass bust of a man with an appallingly square face, 17 ragged orange paperbacks for Sirius — they all went into one of the pockets on his coat as soon as there weren’t any Muggles paying attention to the physical impossibility of it all.

They only went into one or two storefronts — “all the good stuff’s on the street” — but after an hour or two they stopped in front of a building with posters tacked up on the wall in front.

“What is this place?” Sirius asked, studying the posters. There were one or two that had Muggle musicians on them.

“Muggle cinema,” Alphard said. “Moving pictures, you know? Want to drop in?”

Sirius looked up at his uncle, confused. “I thought Muggle pictures didn’t move.”

His uncle just laughed. “Come on, it’ll be fun. We’ll see what’s showing.”

While Alphard was standing in line buying tickets, Sirius studied a programme on the wall, more confused than ever. Apparently later that night, there was to be a “screening” of the Beatles’ _Yellow Submarine._ Were they just going to cart in a big record player and turn it on for everyone? That didn’t seem to make much sense.

“We’re all set,” Alphard said from behind him. “Come on, take your ticket. Prices for sweets were outrageous so I nicked us some jelly babies when they weren’t looking.”

Sirius let his uncle lead him down a short hall, into a surprisingly large chamber — half the size of the Great Hall, at least — with a big white curtain at the front of the room. There was a thin cloud of smoke in the air already, and Alphard steered them away from the glowing cigarette embers to sit midway in the back. The seats were plush, and surprisingly comfortable. They took three, putting Alphard’s coat on the side furthest from the aisle.

“I hate sitting next to people at these places,” he said, lazily conjuring a matching velvet footstool for them both and leaning back in a chair that Sirius didn’t think had been able to recline before.

“So I don’t think I understand,” Sirius said. “Do they put the pictures up on the screen? And people just, what, watch them move?”

“There’s sound too,” Alphard said. “Relax. You’ll get it in a minute.”

Sirius had no idea what his uncle had bought them tickets for, but he didn’t care. Because Alphard was right: As soon as the projector flickered into light and motion, Sirius realized the whole thing was like the bit of traveling theatre Alphard had taken him and Regulus to once, when his parents were out of town. Except somehow, the Muggles had captured the image of those performers and put them on this big white screen.

He frankly couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was seeing — unlike the circus Alphard had taken them to, there didn’t seem to be much of a story at all — but he laughed just as hard at all of it anyway — the big explosions, the moving drawings, the singing, the man in the suit who kept saying things were too silly. Very little made sense to him, but his uncle seemed to be enjoying it too, and the Muggles whose faces he could make out in the light from the curtain couldn’t seem to take their eyes off the screen. Especially, he noticed, during the scene with the half-naked women.

“That was amazing!” he shouted at the end, as a long list of names flashed on the screen, almost obscured by the return of the strange drawings. “I don’t know what in the name of Merlin any of it was, but it was so, so cool.”

“I’m not sure even the Muggles really know what this Monty Python business is,” Alphard said, standing up and vanishing their rubbish. “But it’s a fun way to spend a couple hours, I agree.”

As they shuffled out of the cinema, his uncle reached into one of his endless pockets and withdrew a battered brass pocket watch. Looking at the wares around them, Sirius wouldn’t have been surprised to learn it came from this very street.

“If I know your mother, they’re probably thinking of heading back home right about now.”

Sirius’s heart sank.

“But,” Alphard continued, putting the watch away, “between indulging your brother with the trip to Sugarplum’s Sweets he’s undoubtedly asking for… and the fact that they probably won’t bother checking up on you when they get home?”

Sirius answered his uncle’s half-question with three quick nods.

“—then I think we have more than enough time for one more trip on the carpet. So where to?”

“Oh,” Sirius said. Getting to pick the destination hadn’t occurred to him. “I mean… I don’t know where anything is.”

“Well give me a suggestion, at least,” Alphard said. “I know the city like the back of my hand. You tell me what kind of place you’d like to go to, and I’ll get you there.”

For an instant, Sirius could see himself in the bell tower at school, hearing the wind whistle past as he pressed his nose against a window and stared into the distance.

“Somewhere high,” he said. “Somewhere we can be above everyone else.”

——

For an instant, Sirius regretted his suggestion. It felt as though the slightest of breezes would send him falling down, screaming all the way to the ground. Or maybe all it would take is for him to stop trying not to fall.

Then Alphard took his arm, sharply, and pulled him a half-step further from the edge. “Come on, let’s sit over here.”

“Here” was a pair of armchairs, improbably sitting on the top of Victoria Tower, with a bottle of Butterbeer and two glasses gently floating in between.

“Sorry,” Sirius said, apologizing automatically. “I’ve just… I’ve never been up this high. Even Hogwarts isn’t this tall.”

Moving a few steps away didn’t ruin the view. From his seat, Sirius could still see Big Ben, improbably lower than their high perch, and the tiny colored dots of Muggle cars passing by Westminster on their way in or out of the city. This high, the sounds of the city faded away, a dull buzz at best.

“You think this is good?” Alphard said, sitting next to him and pouring himself a glass. “Some of the new building these Muggles have made, the apartment towers? They’re even taller. View’s not as good, though.”

Sirius poured himself a glass of Butterbeer too, though he was careful to fill the glass only half full. He didn’t trust himself back on the carpet if he got too buzzed.

It had never occurred to him, he realized, that one day he would be able to just do things like this. Take the day to wander a random London street, or see a Muggle moving picture. Buy an illegal magic carpet and pay off anyone who looked at it askance. Rescue a favorite nephew from his cruel imprisonment.

It was a nice sort of life to imagine, if the thought of little Reguluses running around didn’t make him want to hurl right over the edge of the tower.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to you at the wedding,” Alphard said suddenly, and his daydream shattered in an instant.

“It’s fine,” Sirius said quickly. He’d thought Alphard not mentioning the wedding meant they weren’t going to talk about it. He’d been counting on that.

“I did try to find you,” his uncle continued. “But I suspect we were going around in circles looking for each other. Glad I kept looking, though. I didn’t find you, but I did avoid getting stunned by the Ministry officials who showed up, unlike a number of my fellow socialites. Though they were foolish enough to turn their wands on the new arrivals.”

Sirius hadn’t known that bit, about the Ministry stunning any of the party guests. But he shouldn’t have been surprised. He wondered if the officials had actually managed to harm any of the actual perpetrators.

“That’s lucky,” Sirius mumbled.

“Yes, it is,” Alphard replied, pensively sipping his Butterbeer. “You truly missed out, leaving to visit your friend early. It was quite the affair.”

So that was the lie his mother had told. Funnily enough, it had never occurred to Sirius to ask.

“You know,” Alphard said, “curious thing, about that wedding. When the Ministry got there, they discovered a bunch of Muggles too. Big worry, that. Muggles, around all these wizards casting spells left and right. International Statute of Secrecy must have been practically shredded.

“They weren’t concerned about any of the hubbub, though. They were trying to figure out what they were all doing in the kitchen, and why they had a number of serious injuries.”

Sirius’s blood ran cold. “Were they—”

“All fine, in the end,” Alphard said, waving his hand idly. “Some Mediwitches on hand dealt with the injuries, and then they were Obliviated and sent on their way. I heard a rumor they actually had a few happy memories added in — two of the Muggles were newlyweds, it seems.”

“I see,” Sirius said, slowly.

“None of this was reported in the _Prophet_ , of course. Ministry was very keen to keep it quiet, for obvious reasons. They weren’t shy about talking about it the night of. Though they might not have realized I was there, seeing as how I was using a Disillusionment Charm to slip back into the pantry for a late-night snack.”

The image of an invisible Alphard trying to steal leftovers 20 minutes after the Ministry broke down the door of the registry would have made Sirius laugh, normally.

“They were having a bit of a disagreement — which you know I would never normally eavesdrop on, but it was an unusual evening. Seems one of the officials thought the Muggles might have been working for the wizards there at the party. Although working wasn’t really the word she used. She seemed to suspect that the wedding party might have… encouraged them to assist in the evening’s _festivities_.”

The last word came out of his uncle’s mouth rotten as a wormy apple, and a tense silence settled. Sirius watched the shadows start to lengthen as the sun set, wanting to be anywhere else.

“You found them, didn’t you?” Alphard said. “You stumbled onto them, in the back.”

Sirius should have known this would happen.

“Yes,” Sirius admitted. “But Uncle Al, you don’t understand. Bellatrix—”

Alphard put up a hand to stop him. “I can imagine what Bellatrix and her friends might have been doing.” His uncle looked ill, like he’d seen it himself. Maybe he had seen something like it, long before.

“I couldn’t find you,” Sirius said, words stumbling out of his mouth. “Regulus didn’t care, and I couldn’t find you, and I couldn’t just… I couldn’t just let it keep happening.”

“What you did,” his uncle said, “was incredibly dangerous. You were alone, outnumbered a hundred to one, by wizards and witches a lot older and smarter than you. None of whom would have hesitated for a moment before casting any one of their top ten curses on you, regardless of your age.”

“I know,” Sirius said, a flicker of rage running through him as he turned to glare at his uncle. “My own mother was one of them, Uncle Al. Or were you too busy looking for a snack to see that?”

Alphard hadn’t known that part. Sirius knew it the instant the words left his lips. Alphard recoiled, like Sirius had let his own curse loose. In a certain sense, he supposed he had.

“Are you…” He reconsidered. “Sirius, that only proves my point. What you did — it was impressive, to be sure. The chaos you caused, in an instant, without anyone realizing it was you? I’m not sure I would be able to accomplish it.

“But it was reckless. You had no way to realize your plan would work, and every reason to believe it wouldn’t. And yet you did it anyway. That’s what I can’t understand, Sirius. What made you risk everything on this chance? And how can I convince you not to do it again?”

There was an uncertainty flooding his belly. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced since the wedding — when he and Alphard were talking about changing the world, on that balcony. It was the sense of vertigo that came with realizing this man he admired more than his own parents was as far from his point of view as he could possibly be.

It felt terribly grown-up. It hurt.

“You _can’t_ convince me,” Sirius said. “You’re absolutely right. I was surrounded by people who would have seen me as an enemy if they knew I was the person casting those spells. But the difference between them and me is that I already know we’re not on the same side. And I can’t just pretend that isn’t true. Not when they’re torturing people right in front of my eyes.”

Alphard studied him, stroking his beard absently. “Alright,” he said finally. “There’s nothing I can do to change your mind. I’ll have to live with that.”

We both will, Sirius thought.

“I think that’s long enough,” Alphard said abruptly, faking a look at his pocket watch. “You’ll be wanting dinner, and how could I deprive good old Brutus of the opportunity to bring it to you?”

“It won’t be Brutus,” Sirius said, relieved at the change of subject. “Walburga likes him at service for their meals. She and Orion have a running bet about how long it’ll take for the other ear to fall off.”

Alphard tut-tutted his sister with a shake of the head, getting up and walking over to the curled-up carpet. “She’s too hard on those elves. Your father’s side of the family cultivated one of the greatest corps of house elves in a century, and she’s treating them like—”

“Muggles?”

He couldn’t help it.

Alphard turned to look at Sirius, his mouth twisting ever-so-slightly. “I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “But she would. Bella would. And a great many other people would.”

“Not me,” Sirius said.

Alphard nodded. Then he went back to vanishing the rest of their stuff, clearing the rooftop of any sign that they had been there.

“How did you know?” Sirius asked. “If you didn’t know about my mother, how did you…”

“I did what you should hope every other guest at that party is too self-absorbed to do,” Alphard said, not looking back at Sirius. “Among my more expensive possessions is a rather nice Pensieve. I went back through my own memory of the night, trying to find something I missed in the moment. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw you, wand out, ducking before anyone else knew that wedding cake was going to explode.”

“Ah,” Sirius said, looking out at Big Ben again. “That makes sense.”

“And—”

Sirius turned to look back at his Uncle Al, who was staring at him with the oddest expression.

“I think, as soon as I saw your parents standing with Regulus, and you nowhere in sight… I think I knew then, Sirius. Your mother had this look on her face, like — like she’d seen something new for the very first time.

“I think it was you, Sirius. I think she saw the real you for the first time that night. And maybe… maybe I did too.”


	4. I'm Happy Just To Dance With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe, when they all get back to Hogwarts, things will get a little better.
> 
> (Things do not get a little better.)

“Well, this feels weird.”

Peter’s mother folded her arms uncomfortably. She and Peter were standing on the platform for the Hogwarts Express, saying their goodbyes, deliberately avoiding the section of the walkway where they’d done the same thing two years ago. Right before she ran away from his father.

_(There it is, right next to the bench and the half-torn Hobgoblins poster.)_

“It’s not weird,” she lied. “It’s nice. I missed getting to send you off last year. Didn’t think I was going to get to this year either.”

“Good thing Dad got caught breaking international wizarding law and had to flee the country then.” Peter hadn’t realized quite how gifted he could be with sarcasm until his mother had moved back into the house. They’d reached a truce of sorts, in the weeks after her arrival with Bertie, but the peace had come with a cold shift in their relationship.

They’d both changed since she’d been gone — more than he’d realized, from her letters and their brief encounters — and where once there might have been his father to sort out any spats between them, now there was just Bertie, who didn’t protest much as long as voices weren’t raised.

So instead of the shouting that had marred their first night living back under the same roof, Peter and his mother had switched to half-truths, and sarcasm, and always pointing out the good sides of their new arrangement while pretending the bad didn’t exist.

“I appreciate you being alright with Bertie coming along,” his mother said, changing the subject. Her boyfriend — no, _fiancé_ — was a polite distance away from their goodbye conversation, looking agog at anything slightly magical and generally making a fool of himself.

_(If she was going to bring him, she could have at least prepared him better. He’s embarrassing.)_

“It’s fine,” Peter said. “Like you said, I have to start getting used to him sooner or later, right?”

That had been their big row of the week. His mother had decided three days before he left for Hogwarts was the perfect time to pick a fight about Peter refusing to go out of his way to have a conversation with Bertie. Bertie hadn’t even been complaining about it, as far as Peter could tell. She just happened to overhear Bertie’s 18th consecutive attempt of the summer to try and make conversation with Peter while he was deliberately ignoring him. Apparently he had not been pretending to reread his copy of _A Beginner’s Guide to Transfiguration_ convincingly enough.

“Yes,” she replied, “but it’s still nice of you. I would have understood if you wanted this to be just us for a year.”

_(Oh, sure, now you tell me.)_

“This has been a lot of change all at once, Peter,” his mother continued. “And I know… I haven’t always handled it in the most grown-up way myself. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Peter said, shuffling his feet. “Heck, if it wasn’t for me getting caught with that record player, you and Bertie would probably still be back in Nice, all happy and stuff.”

His mother stiffened. “Peter…”

She bent slightly to look him right in the eyes. It made his sense of deja vu intensify.

“Peter. I know the last few months have been hard for us. But I don’t want you to _ever_ think Bertie or I are unhappy to be here in London with you. The circumstances that brought us back together may have been terrible — but this is all I ever wanted, Peter. To have the freedom to be in London, with you and Bertie. Do you understand?”

He didn’t. But if he said that, she’d never let him on the train. And he desperately needed to get on that train. Get away from her, Bertie, and everything else back in London.

“Sure,” Peter said. “I understand.”

“Good,” his mother said, too happy to suspect he was lying. She wrapped her arms around him in a big hug, squeezing him tightly.

He didn’t protest. He let her hug him as long as she needed, even though it was unbearably embarrassing.

_(See, mum? See how grown-up I am now?)_

“Okay, my little glow worm,” she said. “Let’s get you on your way. Third year’s a big one.”

Peter mutely let his mother lead him back over to the train, collecting Bertie along the way. He let Bertie take his trunk for him, carrying it into the train and shoving it into an open luggage rack. He put on a fake smile as Bertie told him how delightful it was to see all the magical business all around them, and how glad he was to have been invited. He let his mother give him a quick kiss on the cheek. And then, after he did a convincing enough job telling them they didn’t have to wait until the train left or his friends got there, they left, waving him goodbye as he stepped up on the train.

He was free. Finally.

Ringo’s cage clutched in hand, he hurried down the half-full train. He hadn’t seen any of the boys on the platform, but there were still 20 minutes or so until the train left, and they were all terrible at arriving on time. If he could find an empty compartment, he could probably have a few minutes to himself before—

“Peter!”

He nearly tripped over himself. Right there, in the compartment to his right, were James, Sirius and Remus, looking at him expectantly.

_(Bollocks.)_

——

Considering the fact that their friend’s father was an international fugitive, and they hadn’t seen Peter since he’d vanished before their eyes in July, it took a lot more convincing than Remus would have expected to convince his friends that they needed to be there when he got to Kings Cross.

“Merlin’s beard, James! If Sirius, who is practically under house arrest, can get there early, I think you can figure out how to do it!”

That wasn’t strictly true — Sirius had finally promised to _ask_ his parents _,_ after a week of begging — but Remus was willing to tell a little white lie, considering the situation had come to him sticking his head into a fireplace on the evening of August 31.

“I know, I know,” James said. “But Remus…”

He looked odd from Remus’s position, sort of larger-than-life and tinged with a reddish glow. Remus supposed it must have been a side effect of the Floo Network connection. He wondered how he looked to James, a head in the flames.

“No buts, James!” He was about a minute and a half from showing up in Godric’s Hollow in person. “We haven’t seen Peter since his dad _kidnapped_ him, and the _Prophet_ has been talking about his family situation all summer. I’m bloody worried about him! He needs to see that his friends are still standing by him, right from the moment he gets on the train.”

“I mean, we are gonna stand by him no matter what time we get there,” James said, looking sulky. “And you’re not thinking about how long it’s gonna take me to get to London. Remember, we’re coming all the way from Godric’s Hollow on broomsticks so I can get some practice on my new Nimbus before tryouts.”

“James.” Even if Remus hadn’t been using the Floo Network to communicate, he felt like his head was about to burst into flames. “Is practicing on your bloody broomstick really more important than making sure Peter is okay?”

“Well—”

“James, who are you talking to, son?”

Remus felt a surge of relief to hear the voice of a grown-up entering the room, and he tilted his head as best he could to get a glimpse. “Hello, Mr. Potter,” he guessed, noting the man’s fuzzy green slippers, gray beard, and striking resemblance to James.

“Oh,” the older man said, tilting to examine the flames. “You must be Remus? Or is it Peter?”

“No, Remus,” he replied. “I’m sorry to bother you this evening, Mr. Potter, I’m just—”

“Remus is just missing me something terrible,” James interrupted, unconvincingly. “And he wanted to confirm that we were still flying to London tomorrow.”

“Well, isn’t that nice,” Fleamont said. “That is still the plan, although I don’t know how my joints’ll stand up to a cross-country flight. Your mother may still be as spry as a woman half her age, but I’m exactly as creaky as I look.”

“Actually, Mr. Potter—” Remus ignored James’s glare. “You know, I was talking to our friend Sirius, and we’re actually a bit worried about Peter.”

“Oh yes,” Fleamont replied. “Terrible business, this Pettigrew affair.”

“We were thinking about getting to the train station early, so we could get a compartment to ourselves and surprise him,” Remus continued. “You know, since he’s had such a rough summer.”

“What a lovely idea!” Fleamont said. “You’re both such nice boys, thinking of your friend like that. Well, I don’t think Euphemia or I will have any objection to staying off the broomsticks this time around. Unless you’d like to wake up earlier than we planned, James?”

“Um… No, that’s okay, Dad. We can sleep in this time.”

“Not too late, though,” Fleamont said. “If we’re not flying in, I think there’s a bit of yardwork I could use your help on quick in the morning, before we head in.”

James looked furious even before he saw Remus smirking. “Great.”

“Son, you’re squinting something terrible. Where are your new glasses?”

New glasses?

“Upstairs,” James pouted.

“Well you certainly shouldn’t be having conversations through the Floo in the dark without them. You’ll go blinder than you already are.”

“I am not blind, I’m just—”

“Excited to see your new glasses, James,” Remus said, cutting in. “Bright and early. Right?”

“Right.” James’s dad answered for him, bending down to look better at Remus. “Don’t you worry, Remus. He’ll be there if we have to bring him in his pyjamas.”

James hadn’t, in the end, shown up in pyjamas, though it would have served him right for being such a baby the night before. He wasn’t even the last of the three to show up — the two of them and their parents made small talk for a full five minutes before they saw Sirius and his whole family cross through the barrier. Remus pretended not to notice that they were arguing in whispers, or that Sirius picked up his trunk and walked away in the middle of what appeared to be a very serious dressing-down.

“Sirius!” Remus shouted quickly, before Mrs. Black could say something to call him back. “Come meet my parents!”

Sirius had never looked so relieved, and he was twice as charming on account of it. When his and James’s parents finally agreed to let them board the train on their own, the Potters were grinning from ear to ear, and his mother was wistfully muttering something about being glad he had such nice friends.

“Thank Merlin you were both here already,” Sirius said as they climbed onto the train. “If my mother had been able to lecture me about not disappointing the family much longer, I might have thrown myself onto the tracks.”

“The train doesn’t leave for a half-hour, you nutter,” Remus said. “Come on, let’s find a good compartment.”

It didn’t take them long to get settled. Remus had never gotten on the train so soon, but he quickly realized that once they got past the prefects’ compartment and the plusher cabins at the front of the train, they had their pick of the train. He pointed out one at random midway down, and James and Sirius followed him in, collapsing with relief into couches.

“I’m glad you’re out of that house, Sirius,” James said. “Your parents sounded like a nightmare.”

“I won’t dispute that,” Sirius replied. “But honestly, being confined to my room was sort of nice, in a way — at least I didn’t have to spend any time with them.”

“Sure,” James said. “But still. You just spent the whole rest of the summer in your room?”

“Actually,” Sirius said, “there was one day when my uncle—”

A familiar face started to walk past the compartment, and Remus waved his arm to shut Sirius up. “Peter!”

The boy stopped, turning his head sharply to look in at them.

Remus’s first thought was that their friend looked horrible. He was still wearing Muggle clothes, but they were terribly wrinkled. There were deep bags under his eyes too, and he had only given his hair a cursory combing this morning.

His second thought was that Peter did not look happy to see them.

“Oh, hey,” Peter said, forcing a smile. “I didn’t think you were here yet.”

“We got here early,” Remus said. “Thought we’d surprise you.”

“I’m surprised,” Peter replied.

No one else said anything.

After an awful silence, Peter looked up over the compartment, where the three boys had put their trunks and Sirius’s owl. “You mind if I tuck Ringo in next to Diana, Sirius? Then we don’t have to worry about him in the compartment.”

“Please do,” Sirius said. “She could use a friend to talk to during the trip. You know I wasn’t allowed to let her out of her cage the whole time I was home?”

“That’s terrible!” Peter said, lifting Ringo’s cage over his head. “I felt bad leaving Ringo in his for just a couple of days after… And Diana’s so much bigger than him!”

“Well, she seems to be doing okay now,” Sirius said.

He gave James and Remus a quick glance. He hadn’t missed Peter avoiding the mention of his father either.

“I think when we get to Hogwarts, I’ll probably want to run up to the Owlery and make sure she’s stretching her wings,” he continued.

“Not before dinner?” James said. He sounded semi-seriously outraged.

“Merlin, no,” Sirius said, laughing. “Don’t worry, I will not miss the opportunity to eat my fill for the first time since I was at your parents’. The house elves of the Noble and Ancient House of Black are not the best chefs in the world.”

“So were you just stuck up there all summer?” Peter asked. “You never went out of the house?”

“Well actually,” Sirius said. “I was just telling the other guys, but there was this one day where my Uncle Al showed up to break me out?”

“You didn’t tell me that!” James said.

“I was saving it!” Sirius said. “It’s a good story! It has a magic carpet and everything.”

“Wait, you have a magic carpet?” Peter said. “That’s even better than James’s Invisibility Cloak.”

“Debatable,” James muttered.

Sirius ignored him, launching into his own story. “So I’m sitting there, minding my own business, talking to Remus — Remus, you know this part of the story — and then I get a tap on my window…”

So they weren’t going to talk about it yet.

It seemed like that was what Peter wanted. Otherwise he would have said something right away. Wouldn’t he?

Either way, Remus wasn’t going to push it. This had been a crazy summer for all of them. Maybe the thing they needed right now was just to be together for a couple hours, on their way back home.

He hoped that was all they needed.

——

It had been nice to spend the entire afternoon cozied up in the compartment with Remus, James, and Sirius, talking about everything and nothing all at once. But Peter didn’t truly relax until the moment the Hogwarts Express rounded that last corner, and the parapets of Hogwarts cut through the early evening fog.

_(We’re here. Home.)_

It was a strange realization to make all at once, that this school had become more of a home than his actual house back in Chiswick. For the past two years, just living with his dad, he had been lying to himself, saying that it was residual weirdness from his mum leaving, or the natural response to returning home after months at school.

But his dad’s sudden departure hadn’t made the feeling go away. It had only gotten worse, with the addition of his mum and Bertie. And at this point, he couldn’t see the sight of the family home giving him the same swell of delight that these ancient bricks and mortar did.

When the train screeched to a stop, Peter saw his friends share a look between the three of them. He was sure they were thinking about him. They hadn’t talked about anything that had happened this summer — not his dad taking him home from Diagon Alley, not his father skipping town after causing an international incident, not his mum and her Muggle fiancé moving in. They hadn’t even talked about anything that had happened at the end of the year, when they got caught in the Cavern. It had been wonderful. But they were going to keep giving each other those looks unless he said something.

_(Ugh.)_

“Hey,” Peter said, only half-looking at the others. “Before we get off the train…”

“Peter,” Remus said immediately. “You don’t—”

“I do,” Peter replied, avoiding the escape for once. “You guys have been super nice about…everything that’s happened to me this summer. I really appreciate it. But I’m okay. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“We’re not worried about you,” Sirius said.

“Sirius means we’re not more worried about you than we should be,” James said, glaring at the other boy. “Not that we should be worried about you. We’re not. We’re just—”

“Ignore them,” Remus said. “What I think they are trying to say is that we’re your friends. And you can talk to us if you need to.”

“Thank you,” Peter replied. “I don’t think that I need to. But I will remember that.”

“It’s probably not even going to be a big deal,” James said. “There hasn’t been anything in the _Prophet_ about it all week. Unless they mentioned it somewhere further in than the front page. I haven’t been reading that far.”

Remus rolled his eyes and flicked his wand, sending his trunk sliding across the floor and directly into James’s shin. He equally ignored James’s yelp of pain and Sirius’s cackles of laughter. “James is an idiot whose appreciation for the wizarding press is appalling, but he’s right. Your dad has been in the news significantly less. And even if things are weird at first, I’m sure something else will pull focus within the weekend.”

“If nothing else,” Sirius said, “I’m sure people will be sufficiently distracted by the fact that Gryffindor is starting the year 100 points down.”

_(You know, I’d almost managed to forget that.)_

“But that’s our fault too,” Peter said. “Won’t that make things worse?”

“Nobody knows it was our fault,” Remus said, looking each of them in the eye in turn. “And we’re going to keep it that way. It happened months ago. None of the people who caught us are still at Hogwarts except the professors. And I don’t see either McGonagall or O’Brien spreading it around.”

Sirius looked like he wanted to argue with Remus, but he was distracted by the sound of the compartment door sliding open.

“There you lot are!”

Jack Lewis and Nabin Mirza were there at the door, the latter suddenly towering over his friend. Nabin looked to have grown at least six or eight inches over the summer, and Jack had picked up an inch or two as well. It made Peter feel terribly self-conscious, especially as they all reflexively stood up and he noticed the other three boys in the compartment were all taller than him now too.

“We didn’t see any of you running in at the last minute,” Jack said, looking smug. “Figured you’d missed the train all together.”

“Nice to see you too, Jack,” James said. “Mind shoving along so we can get our trunks down?”

Jack and Nabin shuffled a few steps to the side to let the others out, but didn’t continue down the train.

_(Fine with me. Means we can’t talk any more about our disastrous misadventures.)_

“You should have found us,” Nabin said, grinning ear to ear. “We ended up sharing our compartment with a couple of fourth-year girls the whole way. Their friend kicked them out to snog with her boyfriend. Can you believe that?”

“Not really,” Sirius said, reaching up to grab Ringo’s cage first and handing it to Peter. “Seems like they’d have a lot of company to choose from before settling for the two of you.”

Jack flushed, running his hand absently through his perfectly-coiffed hair, but Nabin just crossed his arms and looked Sirius dead in the eye. “Ha ha, Black. Very amusing. Jealousy doesn’t really become you.”

“Believe me,” Sirius replied. “I am not jealous of the poor fourth-years who had to sit there while you and Jack fell all over yourselves trying to impress them.”

“We weren’t _trying_ to impress them,” Nabin said. “We were _succeeding_. Rebecca said—”

“Mates, keep it moving!”

Peter turned to look behind them, and saw a older boy walking toward them deliberately, a bright blue badge with “HB” in gold scrollwork pinned to the front of his robes. “Come on,” the Head Boy said, “Train’s clearing out. Time for you lot to do the same.”

Peter and the others did as he said, though not without a lot of grumbling. To his relief, none of the other five boys seemed to notice or care when he kept silent all the way up to the castle. They just kept their japes going back and forth, laughing about this and that.

Right before they reached the entrance, Peter jumped at the sound of his name.

“What?” He spun away from the small window of the carriage, looking straight back at the others.

“I was just saying,” James said, looking at him a little oddly, “that you didn’t seem to think Professor Egg would be coming back, right?”

_(Not unless he single-handedly killed every one of the Death Eaters who attacked his wife, and probably Lord Voldemort to boot.)_

“Uh, yeah,” he said, half-stuttering. Peter realized suddenly that he had only told Remus the whole story about what he’d seen their last night at Hogwarts, in the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor’s office. He certainly wasn’t going to get into it now, in front of Jack and Nabin as well. “I, uh, didn’t see him at end-of-term feast. And I heard from somebody that something, um, happened with his family over the summer.”

“Told you,” Jack said, clapping Nabin on the shoulder. “That’s three professors in two years. I’m telling you, the jinx is real.”

Nabin wasn’t convinced. “Just because there’s no turnover with the other professors doesn’t mean there’s a jinx on the Defense Against the Dark Arts job, Jack. Besides, why would someone who’s trying to take over Britain waste his time toying with the hiring practices of a school for children?”

Jack and James started shouting over each other with their own answers, but before either of them could agree on who was going to talk first, the carriage screeched to a halt, and Peter popped the door open as soon as he could reach it, hurrying up the steps into the Entrance Hall.

“Geez, Pete, hungry much?” Sirius said, following him in with the others.

_(Don’t think I didn’t notice you running nearly as fast as me, Sirius.)_

From the sounds coming from the Great Hall beyond, most of their classmates had already gone through to dinner, but by virtue of showing up in one of the last carriages, Peter and the boys had found themselves amid the least hungry and most chatty contingent of students, it seemed. There were two or three dozen of them mingling in the Entrance Hall, mostly girls their age or younger, though there was a couple of fifth or sixth years in the corner trying to pretend they couldn’t hear Professor O’Brien trying to usher them out of the entryway.

“Alright, alright,” O’Brien bellowed, his New York accent growing increasingly strident in his irritation, “get yahselves in already. Some of us’re operatin’ with more belly to fill than others.”

“We’d better go in right away,” Remus said, giving O’Brien a sideways look. “I, uh, don’t want to start the year on O’Brien’s bad side.”

_(Considering we embarrassed him last year by revealing we’d found a secret chamber three doors down from his office that he didn’t know about…)_

Sure enough, O’Brien’s glare seemed to sharpen when he saw Peter, Remus, and Sirius, but he didn’t say anything aloud, just turned to a group of girls and started to usher them along.

“You’re right, Remus,” Peter said, starting to walk toward the double doors to the Great Hall. “Besides, the sooner we get inside, the sooner—”

In the space between words, Peter heard the softest little _whoosh_.

And then he stumbled.

Well, not stumbled.

Tripped.

Tripped over nothing he could see. A nothing that felt like it had the weight of a man’s arm behind it.

As he tripped, he tumbled. As he tumbled, he saw two things.

Out of the corner of his eye, that group of boys again, looking straight at him.

Then, as he turned his head just a little to see where he was going, the stairs down to the dungeons.

Peter didn’t feel himself falling, not really. He felt the sweep of the nothing against his legs, felt his body leave the ground, felt himself start to shift forward in the air without a speck of control.

The next thing he felt was the sudden sensation of being on the ground, somewhere he was not supposed to be, looking up in the opposite direction he’d been facing a moment before at a stunned James, Sirius, and Remus.

“Hey,” Peter said faintly, “what are all of you doing way up there?”

And then the pain started to slide in, all up and down his body and especially in the part of his leg which he suddenly realized he could not move.

_(fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck)_

One of the boys shouted his name — “Peter!” — and started to rush down, but he was swept aside by O’Brien.

_(that fat old man moves so goddamn fast)_

“Gormlaith’s ghost,” O’Brien cursed. To Peter’s eyes, he seemed to be very near and very far all at the same time. Had he always been quite so blurry?

“Hey, Professor,” Peter said. “Sorry ‘bout last term. We coulda invited you in for a Butterbeer if you’d wanna’d.”

_(The hell was he saying?)_

“Be quiet, Pettigrew,” O’Brien said, stretching his wand out over Peter’s body. “You’ve taken quite a spill.”

_(Oh oh oh oh good explanation.)_

“That’d explain lots,” Peter said aloud. “Thankses, Professor.”

There was another person behind O’Brien now, and Peter could hear murmuring from the top of the steps that was not as quiet as would have been polite.

_(Rude.)_

“Is he going to be alright, Professor?”

“He has quite the break in the leg,” O’Brien said to the boy, who was either Remus or George Harrison, “and he seems to have hit his head fairly hard on the way down. But it’s nothing Madam Pomfrey can’t fix. I don’t think your friend’ll be making it to the feast, unfortunately. At least not until dessert.”

“That’s great!” Peter shouted. “I love dessert.”

O’Brien shook his head back and forth, and then wiggled his wand over Peter’s head. Peter followed the wand with his eyes, and the effort was considerably more exhausting than he expected.

His eyelids started to flutter, and he felt himself tumbling again, though this time without nearly so much falling down a stairwell.

“Go on in to the feast,” he half-heard O’Brien say. “A little clumsiness is nothing to be worried about. Pettigrew will be right as rain in an hour or two.”

The last thing he thought clearly — really, truly clearly — was this:

He was not clumsy.

He’d been tripped.

He was pretty sure those boys had done it to him.

And he had no idea what to do about it when he woke up.

——

“Are you sure we shouldn’t go up to the hospital wing?” Remus asked, looking over at the door again.

“Dessert’s not done yet,” Sirius said, wiping half a pastry off of his face. “We should at least keep eating until it’s all the way done, and then go up and see him.”

“Did you see his leg?” Jack asked. Remus could tell their classmate was getting ready to exaggerate for the benefit of the girls in earshot, and rolled his eyes at James across the table. “It looked like he’d grown a new knee overnight. Going in the opposite direction.”

Remus watched Daisy Mandel shudder at the thought. She and Trix Bellicose were the only ones actually paying attention to Jack, though Remus suspected Trix was more interested in the gruesome story than the person it had happened to.

“Remus, he’s fine,” James said. “If he’s not back by the end of the feast, we can run up to the hospital wing and check on him. It’s not like we have class tomorrow or anything.”

“September 1 should _always_ be on a Saturday,” Sirius said. “Can’t we get Dumbledore to change that?”

“That’s… not really how calendars work,” Remus said. He pushed the last of his food around his plate, thinking about Peter.

The thing that kept tugging at his brain was the fact that he couldn’t understand what Peter could have tripped on, other than his own two feet. He’d looked over the entire Entrance Hall as soon as O’Brien had left, Peter floating limply along beside him, and there was nothing. The only theory that made any sense was that an invisible Peeves had sideswiped him. But it wasn’t Peeves’s style to cause mischief without gloating afterward.

He could tell James and Sirius were just glad the conversation topic was on something other than the black lumps of obsidian nestled in the bottom of Gryffindor House’s hourglass. It had been the only thing being discussed as Remus and the others came into the Great Hall, and it didn’t help matters that, after the Sorting Ceremony was completed, Dumbledore had kicked off the feast with a hearty cry of “Let us all take a brief interval from sharing our very interesting pieces of gossip by putting food in our bellies!”

“I’m not really worried about Peter,” said Lily Evans from further down the table, earning an outraged look from Daisy. “I still want to know what the deal is with the house points. Mary went down the table during dinner to ask Martha Church and she didn’t know either. Said it didn’t come up in the prefects’ briefing on the train.”

“I mean, I think black gemstones in the bottom of the hourglass is pretty obvious,” Nabin said. “Someone’s already managed to lose house points in the last hour or two, and… well, that must be what happens if you lose points before you have any.”

“Well normally I would say some little firstie screwed something up,” Trix said, “but they’ve only been sorted for a half-hour. And the hourglass was like this when we came in.”

“Maybe somebody got caught, like, snogging or something,” Sirius said — fairly unconvincingly.

“That’s a lot of gems,” Lily retorted. “Who were they snogging, Professor Sprout?”

Remus could see Sirius getting ready to start an argument, and he did not see that ending well for them.

“Speaking of professors,” he said, trying to sound like he wasn’t distracting his fellow Gryffindors from ultimately deducing that they were sitting right next to the house-point-losers themselves, “do we agree that the new professor’s got to be Defense Against the Dark Arts?”

James took the hint immediately, turning sharply in his seat to look up at the head table. “I think we can agree on that,” he said, “I just don’t know if we can figure out anything else about him…or her?”

The professor in question was sitting midway down the head table, between Professor Slughorn and Professor Sprout. Usually Dumbledore was the winner of the unofficial Wizarding Robe Fashion Award at the Start-of-Term Feast, but whoever this was seemed to have them beat handily. They were wearing a long set of magenta robes, with what appeared to be detailed, feminine silver lacework spiraling around and around the arms. But beneath the robes, Remus could see the professor was wearing a navy waistcoat with a matching bow tie, and their curly blond hair might have been coiffed into a slight curl, but it was a decidedly masculine quiff. Both the face and the round, lavender-tinted glasses seemed to belong to either camp, making it impossible to determine anything one way or another.

“I guess I assumed he was a guy,” Nabin said. “I mean, anyone dressing like that back home probably wouldn’t be, but I’ve had to get used to wizards dressing all kinds of ways since I came here.”

“You _would_ assume she was a man,” Trix said, looking Nabin up and down. “Boys.”

“They kind of look in-between,” Sirius said, studying the unknown professor. “Very glam. How sure are we that nobody from Mott the Hoople is a wizard?”

“A hoople’s a kind of bird, isn’t it?”

“No, James, that’s a Fwooper,” Jack replied.

“Oh yeah! I think my mum inherited one of those after—”

But before James could finish his sentence, Dumbledore stood up, stepping briskly to the podium.

“Hello, felicitations, and welcome to a new year at Hogwarts,” said Dumbledore. The headmaster may not have stood out as much as their new professor, but his dark robes still had a festive tinge of red to them. “As we tuck into the lovely desserts prepared for us — including a delightful lemon sorbet I most certainly did not enjoy five spoonfuls of before tonight’s feast began — I have a number of announcements.

“First — and, I have been assured, most importantly — it has come to my attention that our caretaker Argus Filch does not believe any of you are aware of our curfew policy. We have one! Please consult him in his office here on the ground floor to inquire about the specifics. I recommend you do not wait until after 10 pm, for reasons that will be fairly obvious if you choose to do so.

“Second! I have overheard a number of students incorrectly guessing that Gryffindor’s colors are changing to black and red, due to the obsidian gemstones in the house points hourglasses.”

As Dumbledore outstretched a hand to direct everyone’s attention to their colossal blunder, Remus felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand all the way up.

“There is no need for concern. The pro-gold lobby among the staff contingent has assured me that this is merely due to the loss of 100 house points by Gryffindor students at the end of last term, a situation that is—”

Remus never heard what Dumbledore thought the situation was, because a wave of sound and clamor enveloped the Great Hall.

“100 points?”

“Last term?”

“Who the bloody hell—”

“—never win the House Cup this year—”

“Can they even do that?”

“—wasn’t me, but I bet—”

“THIRD…”

Dumbledore’s voice cut through the room like a knife, and the room instantly silenced itself. Remus hoped no one had noticed that he, James, and Sirius were too stunned to pretend it was a surprise to them.

“We must introduce the newest member of the Hogwarts faculty,” Dumbledore said, his voice a bit softer now. “As many of you have guessed, our former Muggle Studies and Defense Against the Dark Arts professor Mordicus Egg will not be joining us this year, having resigned to take care of a family matter.”

Remus thought of the story Peter had told him, about Professor Egg’s wife. “Family matter” was an understatement.

“Instead,” Dumbledore continued, “we will be joined this year by Professor Merrill Aelling.”

Professor Aelling stood up quickly as Dumbledore spoke, and made a sharp, delicate bow to the students below.

“Professor Aelling comes to us from a five-year stint among the dappled Mediterranean waters surrounding the Spell Innovation Institute of Greece, after which our foggy Scottish skies will surely be a much-needed relief.”

“I can never tell when he’s joking,” Sirius whispered. “Can you tell when he’s joking?”

“In addition to making some great progress in the world of spell creation and working on a series of manuscripts, Professor Aelling has spent the last five years annually ignoring my invitations to join our faculty. I am delighted to have finally prevailed upon them.”

“Well, that doesn’t really answer anything,” James muttered, scowling up at the head table. “What kind of a name is Merrill?”

Nabin and Trix spoke at once: “A boy’s.” “A girl’s.”

Remus just shook his head back and forth.

“Spell creation sounds fascinating,” Lily said, staring awed up at the new professor. “Do you think we’ll get to invent any spells?”

“I didn’t even know that was a thing,” Jack muttered.

“Mate, you’re embarrassing,” Nabin whispered back.

“And to conclude,” Dumbledore said, “since classes will not be starting until Monday—”

A small cheer went up in the hall, and Dumbledore smiled to himself.

“—Quidditch tryouts have been moved up to this week. A specific list of times will be posted in your respective common rooms by your head of house.”

“That’s so soon!” James gasped. “Sirius, you’ll borrow a broom and practice with me this weekend, right?”

“No,” Sirius said, so shortly and simply that Remus burst into laughter.

“With that resolved,” Dumbledore said, “I believe it’s time to turn in for the evening! Despite the promise of a free day tomorrow, I hope you will appreciate the wisdom of the goblin philosopher Gragnuff, who famously remarked that ’To go to bed early on Saturday eve is to ensure the dragon will not nibble your bones late on Saturday eve.’ Ta-ta!”

Dumbledore spread his arms wide in farewell, and the desserts vanished from the trays in front of them. To his left and right, Remus heard prefects stand up to start herding away their fellow students, most of whom had burst into discussion of one topic or another as soon as Dumbledore had finished speaking.

As he stood up, Remus was worried to hear that most of the people he could hear were talking about Gryffindor’s negative house points.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing Sirius’s arm and looking deliberately across the table at James. “Dessert’s over. Hospital wing time.”

“Alright, fine,” James said. “See you lot later. We’d better make sure Peter hasn’t tripped over anything else.”

They quickly got the common room password from Martha Church and the other new Gryffindor prefect, Douglas Boot, who were too overwhelmed by the rowdy crop of first-years to care about their escape. It wasn’t as though they weren’t allowed to roam the halls, Remus rationalized to himself. Sure, they were all _supposed_ to go upstairs because that was what people did on the first night back at Hogwarts, but it wasn’t a rule. Probably.

Besides, it wasn’t like they were running around the castle for the reason they usually did. They were going to check on their friend, who’d hurt himself, who they were worried about.

But he could tell from the way James and Sirius looked around corners as they went that they too were worried about the prospect of losing Gryffindor any more points before the year properly started.

When they finally reached the quiet hospital wing, Remus gingerly poked his head around the corner, looking for either Peter or the school’s matron. “Madam Pomfrey?”

At the sound of her voice, she appeared, swinging open the door of an examination room. “Ah, Remus! I wondered if you would be along. I was just waking your friend Peter.”

“Waking?” Remus hurried toward Pomfrey, with James and Sirius both at his heels. “Has he been unconscious this whole time?”

“Oh, heavens no,” Pomfrey said, smiling kindly at him as he approached. “I woke your friend when he arrived, just to make sure he hadn’t truly harmed himself. But he still had a concussion after I mended his leg, so I brewed him a Cordial of Convalescence, so he could properly rest. He should be good as new once he wakes up.”

Pomfrey’s assurances seemed well-placed. Except for a tear in his trousers, Peter looked as if nothing had happened to him, lying in the hospital bed peacefully. As Remus sat next to him, he could see his friend’s eyes starting to flutter open.

“He looks great,” Sirius scoffed. “Maybe I should fall down a flight of stairs sometime.”

“You already sleep nine hours a night,” James said. “If Madame Pomfrey gave you a sleeping potion, you’d probably wake up in January.”

Remus turned to glare at his friends, but before he could say anything, Peter started muttering his own response.

“Nuh uh… Sirius wouldn’t risk missing Chris’mas dinner.”

“Hey!” Remus said, looking back and smiling. “Welcome back.”

“How long have I been asleep?” Peter asked, shaking his head back and forth as he sat up properly. “Is the feast over?”

“Yeah,” James said. “But you didn’t miss much. We have a new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, but nobody knows if they’re a boy or a girl.”

“And somebody lost Gryffindor, like, 100 points already,” Sirius said, with a quick glance back at Pomfrey. “Which is, you know, new information.”

“Sure,” Peter said. He seemed to get a little pensive for a moment, thinking. “Did anyone mention anything about… You know, my dad?”

What a terribly odd question.

“No, not at all,” Remus said. “Sirius was right, on the train. There was way too much other stuff to talk about.”

“Okay, good,” Peter said. But he didn’t look very happy about it.

“Peter,” Remus said, trying to figure out the best way to ask, “what happened earlier tonight? One minute you were walking into the Great Hall, and the next—”

“I tripped,” Peter said quickly. Suspiciously quickly. “I think there was a stone in the floor that was a little higher than the others. Or maybe it’s like that trick step on the Grand Stairwell. You know I’m always forgetting about that too. I don’t really remember much after falling, to be honest.”

“I just mean,” Remus said, “I looked after O’Brien took you away, before we went in for dinner. And there wasn’t—”

“Speaking of dinner,” Peter interrupted. “Any chance one of you could have Madam Pomfrey send for some food? I could eat a hippogriff.”

“Sure,” Sirius said. “Let me go out and grab her.”

“You know what else you did miss, Peter?” James said, pulling up a chair and sitting next to Remus. “Quidditch tryouts are a whole week earlier than they were last year. If you’re feeling better tomorrow, any chance you want to borrow a broomstick and help me practice?”

“I’m feeling better now,” Peter said with a laugh, “and the answer is no. You think I’m going to waste my day falling off a broomstick so you can feel better about tryouts? You’re already on the team.”

“I’m a reserve,” James replied. “What if some second year is, like, the best Chaser Gryffindor has ever seen?”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Peter said. “Remus, tell James to stop being dramatic.”

“Yeah,” Remus said, halfheartedly. “You’ll probably be fine, James.”

“Probably?”

“Hey, Peter,” Sirius said as he came back in, tray in hand, “you got these fantastic lamb chops that we had downstairs. How hungry are you?”

“How hungry are _you?_ ” James asked. “We _just_ ate.”

They all laughed, and Peter shared his lamb chops with Sirius, and then they went back up to the common room for the night.

And the whole time, Remus couldn’t shake the feeling that something was just not right.

——

“This can’t be right,” James said, peering over at Remus’s class schedule. “This says that you’ve got a free period after Potions. It’s supposed to be Care of Magical Creatures first, then a free period.”

Remus stopped copying his schedule into his diary to look at James like he was daft as a mooncalf. It was easy. James seemed to be demonstrating that he _was_ daft as a mooncalf.

To think, it had been _his_ idea for them to sit in the common room and compare their schedules for the year.

“James. I’m not taking Care of Magical Creatures. We talked about this.”

“We most certainly did not!” James turned to look at Sirius, moving so fast he nearly overturned Peter’s inkwell. “Sirius, didn’t we agree that we were all going to take Care of Magical Creatures together?”

“Sure, I guess,” Sirius said, only half-listening. He had his nose buried deep into a copy of _Melody Maker,_ paging back and forth frantically. “Guys, did you know Harrison and Dylan are thinking of starting a record label together?”

James ignored him. “So why aren’t you taking it with us?”

“Because we did not agree to take Care of Magical Creatures together,” Remus said. “We agreed to take Muggle Studies together. Even though some of us have, you know, _met_ a Muggle before. Or, even, have one for a parent.”

James looked very confused. “I could have sworn we decided on Care of Magical Creatures _and_ Muggle Studies.”

“No, that was the compromise you offered after I told you I didn’t want to take Care of Magical Creatures,” Remus said. “You may want to note that asking someone to do _more_ than you were originally asking them to do is not actually a compromise.”

“So wait—” Their argument had finally interested Sirius enough to put down his newspaper. “What else are you taking, Remus?”

“Divination—”

“Oh, come on,” James said, rolling his eyes.

“—at Peter’s request, since you two arseholes refused to take it with him… And Arithmancy, which is something I actually _want_ to take.”

“Why?” Sirius said.

Remus strongly considered picking his wand up off the table and turning Sirius’s hair green.

“Wait,” James said. “Peter, are _you_ taking Care of Magical Creatures?”

“Um,” Peter said, looking like he wanted to melt into the ground “No, I, uh… I only wanted to take two classes. I didn’t want to overtax myself.”

James and Sirius gave each other a look — their “time to make fun of Peter look.” Remus stepped in before they could say anything — Peter’d had a rough enough weekend as it was, in his opinion.

“So, Peter, you must not have anything after Potions tomorrow then, since my second class before lunch is Arithmancy.”

“Oh, come on!” Sirius shouted, ripping Peter’s class schedule out of his grasp. This time, the inkwell did spill, but Remus was already moving, helping Peter pull his papers away from the spreading stain. “That is so unfair. You can just go back to bed every Monday morning?”

“Well, I could,” Peter said, “but I probably won’t. I’m not you, Sirius.”

“The feeling of relief is mutual,” Sirius said, not taking his eyes off Peter’s parchment. “Dammit, you don’t have to get up early on Tuesday either? You have the best schedule, Peter. I hate you.”

“Sirius, your first class on Tuesdays is Care of Magical Creatures at 10,” Remus said, looking over his friend’s shoulder. “That is _hardly_ early.”

“Are you saying I don’t deserve my fair share of beauty sleep?”

“If those nine hours every night are supposed to be beauty sleep, I think you need to start getting 10 or 11,” James snarked.

“Oh, sod off!”

Time to change the subject. “What are you going to do with all your free time tomorrow, Peter?” Remus asked.

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Peter said, reaching over to take his schedule back from Sirius. “I guess I could always go down to the library.”

“That is the most boring thing I’ve ever heard,” James said.

“Why don’t you go back to bed, at least?” Sirius asked.

“Why would you go back to bed?” James said, giving Sirius a full eyebrow.

“Why _wouldn’t_ you?”

“I’m sorry I asked,” Remus said. “I’ve got to head up to the hospital wing to talk to Pomfrey about the full moon this month, Peter, but if you want I can find you after? Don’t know how much time I’ll have before Arithmancy, though.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Peter said, with a wave of his hand. “I’ll think of something. I’m sure there’s got to be other Gryffindors who aren’t taking either Care of Magical Creatures or Arithmancy.”

“That’s very true,” Remus said. He couldn’t see Peter trying to reach out to any of them, though. Remus was pretty sure that the three of them were the only people Peter had spoken to for more than a minute since he’d come back from the hospital wing yesterday night.

“I think I’m going to turn in, actually,” Peter said, yawning. “If we’re going to have Potions first thing every Monday for the rest of the year, I need to get enough sleep before at least one week’s class.”

“That’s not a terrible idea,” Sirius said, packing his things. “I’ll come up with you, Peter.”

“Sirius,” Remus shouted as the two of them started to go up the stairs, “if you pretend to go to bed, but then spend two hours reading comics behind your bedcurtains, I am going to make fun of you tomorrow.”

Sirius made a rude gesture in Remus’s direction, smiling broadly all the while. Then he followed Peter up the steps, chatting his ear off about something they couldn’t hear.

“When,” Remus said, turning to James, “did you and I turn into Father and Mother of this little group?”

“Speak for yourself,” James said, pushing his schedule and Potions textbook aside in favor of a well-worn paperback. “I think you’re a single mum, mate.”

“I don’t feel like a particularly good one,” Remus said, scowling.

“Well, that makes sense,” James said, putting his feet up on the table. “You’re 13. And a boy.”

“Aren’t you worried about Peter?” Remus said. “His family is on the front page of the _Prophet_ at least once a week. He fell down a stairway and broke his leg yesterday, and is acting like nothing happened.”

“I mean, he tripped,” James said, “and Pomfrey fixed it. The whole thing took, like, two hours to resolve.”

“I guess,” Remus said. “But I still say something is wrong.”

James was silent for a minute, and Remus thought he had given up the conversation and was just reading his book. But finally, he looked at Remus and said, “We’ll keep an eye on him, okay? I’m sure between the three of us, we’ll figure out if something else is going on.”

“Good,” Remus said, though something about James’s tone made him a little less-than-certain about his promise. He reached into his bag and pulled out his copy of _Magical Drafts and Potions_ , paging through it. “You should probably brush up on your reading for Potions, you know. I’m sure you didn’t do any of the prep work on antidotes Slughorn assigned for over the summer.”

“Antidotes, shmantidotes,” James said. “Most of the time, you just stick a bezoar in your cauldron along with a couple things to break it down. I’m not worried about it.”

From what Remus could tell, James wasn’t worried about anything — Peter Pettigrew included.

——

Peter had never been more glad to have done his homework in his life. The moment they walked into Potions class, Slughorn had passed out a three-page quiz on antidotes, complete with a final assignment to modify a vial of Pustule Potion so it would cure boils instead of causing them.

He and Remus had seemed to do fine, sitting beside each other at their table, but Peter could hear most of his classmates cursing their way through the exam. The disquiet was perfectly punctuated five minutes before the end of class, when the sudden sound of glass breaking directed everyone’s attention to the back of class, where Liam Fannon and Emory Greengrass were hurrying away from a black, thick sludge that was creeping along the table, making a fizzling sound as it ate away at the wood.

_(Morons.)_

“Oh, Mr. Fannon,” Slughorn said, pushing his chair back and Vanishing the mis-made solution, “I think you’ll be receiving zero marks on the final portion of your examination, unfortunately. Everyone else, time is up — if your vial isn’t issuing pink steam yet, you’re too late.”

Peter looked smugly down at his potion. It was the indigo shade he remembered from making the Cure for Boils during their first year, and there was the tiniest thread of steam coming out of it. He wouldn’t have put it on his own face, but he would happily take the full marks Slughorn was suggesting he’d achieved.

“Nice work, mate,” Remus said.

“Thanks,” Peter said. “You think James and Sirius are going to be sore that you and I are going to score better than they did?” He could see from here that James’s potion was nearly as black as Liam’s had been, and Sirius hadn’t even gotten his to darken in shade from the puce they’d started with.

“Probably,” Remus replied. “But it won’t last long. You’d think with the number of times they’ve blown off studying for Potions that they’d eventually learn their lesson.”

“There’s always next year?”

“Based on the expressions you were all making during this examination,” Slughorn said, sternly looking over his students, “I would strongly recommend you all reread Chapters 8 and 9 of your textbooks before our next class on Thursday, and produce an essay of six to eight inches on the fundamental components of basic restorative potions. We will be spending the next two weeks exclusively on antidotes, and if you are as uninformed on the basics as I suspect you may be, I will be issuing many more zeroes in the coming month.”

_(Welcome back to Hogwarts, everybody.)_

“Please bring your examinations and vials to the front of the room for further review,” Slughorn continued, “after which you are all free to go. Evans, Shafiq, Rosier, and Greengrass, please stay after a moment if you could — I have some information to share about our first Slug Club meeting this year.”

“So glad I’m not in Slughorn’s stupid club,” Sirius said as they all reconvened outside the Potions classroom. “Slughorn really knows how to pick the most stuck-up prats.”

“Hey—”

“Not including Lily, James. Obviously.”

James scowled. “I was actually gonna mention that Slughorn wanted _you_ for his swotty little club, but sure, let’s be mean to Lily Evans for no reason.”

Peter wondered if James was ever going to realize that Lily only had eyes for her Slytherin friend, Severus, who was currently leaned against the wall waiting for her to come back out. But he followed the other three out of the dungeons without saying anything, listening to James and Sirius complain about the exam, until they reached the stairwell leading up to the ground floor.

“Well,” James said, “this is where we leave you two. Care of Magical Creatures is halfway out to the Forbidden Forest, I guess.”

“I heard Lily saying at breakfast that we’ve got this class as a double with Slytherin too,” Sirius said. “So unfair.”

“Hopefully, we get to some dangerous animals right away,” James said. “Maybe we can convince a few snakes to bite off more than they can chew.”

Peter waved goodbye as the boys left, then turned to look at Remus. He was looking guilty.

“I’ve got to go too,” he said. “Pomfrey’s expecting me right after class. Are you still thinking you’ll go up to Gryffindor Tower?”

“Maybe,” Peter said. He hadn’t really thought that far ahead. “I don’t know. I’m not really tired. Just not really sure what else to do…”

“Look, I’ll meet you there,” Remus said. “If I have time before Arithmancy. Otherwise, I’ll see you at lunch. Deal?”

“Sure,” Peter said.

_(He’s not gonna meet me up in Gryffindor Tower.)_

“Cool,” Remus said, already walking off. “Catch you later, Peter!”

And then Peter was standing all by himself, at the top of the stairwell he’d fallen down just two days ago.

_(Awesome.)_

It wasn’t like he’d never been alone in Hogwarts. James, Sirius, and Remus were always having other plans without him — and even when they weren’t, sometimes Peter just needed to be somewhere by himself, to read letters from his parents or catch up on his homework or listen to music—

Well. He supposed he couldn’t really do that anymore.

But he was used to at least going to class with the boys. And the last few days, the others hadn’t let him out of their sight — too worried about the boy who had apparently started throwing himself down the stairs.

_(Their concern had vanished quickly, he noticed, once there was an exciting new class to take.)_

So now, with the three of them gone, Peter was somewhat at a loss for what to do with himself.

Even if Remus wasn’t actually going to take the time to come back, the best option probably was to go back up to Gryffindor Tower. Most everybody would be in class right now. He could get one of the good armchairs by the fire, maybe take some time to write a letter to his mum, if he was _really_ bored. Come to think of it, Ringo would probably appreciate the visit, and—

“Hey, Pettigrew.”

Peter nearly fell over at the sound of the voice. He quickly found its source and almost fell over again.

Evan Rosier was standing there on the stairs, talking to him.

_(Not teasing. Talking.)_

Peter had honestly never seen Rosier’s face lacking a condescending sneer — of all the Slytherin boys in their year, he had quickly outclassed Sirius’s old pal Mulciber in overall unpleasantness — but it was somehow more unnerving without it. Studying him, Peter could get a sense of why every teacher in school seemed to like him — his tightly coiffed, shining black hair and round, inquisitive face made him look like a prize pupil even before he opened his mouth.

“Where’re you off to?” Rosier asked, still apparently talking to him. “I know we’ve got double Care of Magical Creatures with your fellow Gryffindors…”

“No,” Peter said. “I’m, uh… Free period.”

_(This is weird so weird what the hell.)_

“Nice,” Rosier said, crossing his arms and smiling.

_(Smiling.)_

“Listen, mate,” he continued, stepping a little closer to Peter, “I wasn’t gonna say anything, but since it’s just you and I…”

Peter’s mind raced from scenario to scenario. The most likely option at this point was Rosier telling him he had something on his face and then throwing mud at him. Immediately followed by Rosier just jinxing the hell out of him.

“We’re all sorry to hear about your dad.”

_(Dad?!)_

Peter had no idea what sort of face he made, but Rosier reacted like he actually had jinxed him on accident, putting his hands up and backing away a step. “Sorry, sorry — I’m sure it’s a bit of a touchy subject.”

“I—it—it is,” Peter finally stammered out.

“I totally get that,” Rosier said, lowering his hands. Something like sympathy trickled across his face. “It must be terrible to have your dad have to flee like that, and not be able to go with him. I can’t even imagine.”

“Um… Thanks, I guess?” This was the longest conversation Peter had ever had with Rosier. With any Slytherin in his year, maybe.

“I talked to my dad about it,” Rosier continued. “He works at the Ministry, in charge of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, you know? He says the Aurors they’ve assigned to your dad’s case are complete morons. Not a chance they’ll track him down. So I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

Peter hadn’t been worrying, honestly. If the Auror Department was going to catch his dad, they would have done so in the first fortnight. His dad was probably comfortably living it up in some American suburb now, completely concealed by a fake identity.

“It’s just really a shame,” Rosier said. “From everything I hear, it sounds like your dad was doing some great work.”

Suddenly, everything clicked into place.

“My dad says it’d be nice to have more people like your father in the Ministry — smart, talented wizards willing to put their neck on the line for the cause.”

_(He thinks Dad’s… He thinks I’m…)_

“Look, Rosier… Shouldn’t, uh, you be off to Care of Magical Creatures or something?”

Rosier shrugged. “Mulciber’ll cover for me if I’m a little late. I’m only taking it because we’ve got to take two electives, you know? Not like I’m gonna waste my time in Divination or Mudblood Studies.”

“Right,” Peter said, voice shaky.

“Listen,” Rosier said, “I just wanted to let you know I was sorry to hear about your dad, alright? And if you ever get sick of hanging out with your Gryffindor mates—”

“What?”

“—well, I mean, I can’t speak for all the guys of course, but my dad taught me not to look down my nose at a guy just because of what colors they wear on the outside, if you know what I mean. You wouldn’t be the first Gryffindor to get on the right side, and you wouldn’t be the last either.”

Instinct told Peter the only response was to say nothing — pretend he wasn’t here, pretend this was happening to someone else.

It seemed to be working. Rosier was starting to walk away now — except, then, he stopped to say one last thing.

“Hey, that reminds me — as long as we’re talking, might as well let you know I convinced the gang not to call you all out about that thing with the house points last term.”

Peter’s blood went as cold as the Hogwarts lake.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Rosier said, that sneer starting to come back. “We all think it’s bloody hilarious that a bunch of Gryffindors got caught out of bounds breaking so many rules you lost house points for the _next_ year. Avery practically pissed himself when Regulus told us on Saturday night. Anybody else, and that story would be all over the school. Still might get there eventually, if anybody else talks.

“But like I said, Pettigrew — we take care of our own.”

Peter had no idea what he said to Rosier to finally make him leave. For all he knew, he’d said nothing, and simply waited for the other third-year to head off in the direction Peter’s friends had gone, out onto the grounds to Care of Magical Creatures.

He also didn’t know how long he wandered the castle, lost in a buzz of radio static.

Then a familiar voice broke his fugue state.

“Young Pettigrew!”

Peter’s head jolted to the right, where he met the eyes of a wide-bodied wizard in his early 60s, leaning forward in his armchair to stare out of a portrait frame at him.

“How has the summer been, boy? It’s been a long time since you’ve passed this way alone.”

Peter suddenly realized that he’d stumbled across the portrait of former headmaster Basil Fronsac, on the third floor, across from the Trophy Room.

_(I know where I’m wandering to.)_

“I’m okay, Headmaster,” he lied, turning a little so the painting couldn’t see his face. “I’ve got to run — I’ll come back some other time.”

Peter ignored the shouts coming from behind him as he went down the hallway. At the first fork, he took a right, then a left.

He was in the Charms corridor now. Up ahead, through the second door on the left, he could hear Professor O’Brien’s voice, welcoming the students within to N.E.W.T.-level studies. And over on the right, between him and the only door on that side, there was a blank wall.

That was normal. There had always been a blank wall there, on that side of the Charms corridor. But there had been something else before. A shimmer only he could see.

He had to be sure. Trying not to make a sound, he slowly walked up to the wall, and put his hand out to touch the space where the entrance to the Cavern had been.

His fingers pressed solidly against the blue-black stones.

_(It’s gone.)_

For a moment — a brief moment — Peter was fine with that. He and his friends had been caught trespassing in a secret chamber. It had been terribly dangerous. They’d snuck in contraband. They’d used it as a hideout after curfew dozens of times. Of course they would have undone the enchantment on the entrance.

It was the next moment that was the problem.

In that moment, Peter felt everything come crashing down on top of him. Losing the Cavern. His father’s crimes. His mother’s escape from his life. His friends going off to their electives. The boys who tripped him before the Start-of-Term Feast. Evan Rosier standing next to him on the stairs, telling him how they were the same.

He didn’t break into tears until he’d run out of the Charms corridor and into a nearby broom closet. That was the only bit of happiness Peter could find to hold onto.


	5. And I Love Her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys' third-year is in full swing. They've got loads of homework already, Quidditch tryouts are starting already, and they've all got brand-new electives to worry about.
> 
> So naturally, it's the right moment for James and Sirius to meet some life-changing individuals, right?

All the happiness James had felt about being back at Hogwarts was completely gone by the end of the day Monday.

“I cannot believe we have HOMEWORK already in every class!” he said, collapsing grumpily into a chair in the common room. Most of the other third years were already there, noses into one textbook or another.

“I mean, we’re in our third year now,” Remus said, looking at James like he was stupid. “You didn’t think it was just going to be easy classes forever, did you?”

“I didn’t think it was easy classes before,” James muttered, trying to dig his Charms textbook out from the bottom of his bag.

On paper, the day had looked great. Sure, Potions at 8 am wasn’t thrilling, but he had both of his new electives after that, followed by both of his favorite classes, Defense Against the Dark Arts and Charms.

But his hopes for adventure during Care of Magical Creatures were quickly dashed when Professor Kettleburn told them they wouldn’t be dealing with anything more dangerous than a bowtruckle until Christmas, and then tasked them with drawing slips of paper out of an exceptionally singed hat to pick a creature from their copy of _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ to write a 14-inch essay on by next week. He’d gotten Crups, which were apparently just slightly-less-boring dogs. At least Lily Evans got to write about Kelpies.

He’d been excited to have Muggle Studies with all three of the other boys in the afternoon, but their instructor, Professor Matthews, just spent the whole hour telling them her life story, and then told them they needed to read the first half of _Muggle Society and Its Meaning_ by Wednesday. Thank Merlin James had those 200 pages of brick-like prose to help him forget how boring it was hearing Matthews say “government assistance” 13 times.

And then Professor Aelling had been a colossal disappointment. Not only had they all left the classroom as unaware of their professor’s gender as they’d been several nights before, they’d also been saddled with the preposterous task of learning basic Latin — which, in James’s opinion, would be very useless were they in need of defending themselves against any Dark Arts.

“For too long,” Professor Aelling had told them, after the initial uproar died down, “students at Hogwarts have spent the entirety of their academic careers ignorant of the very linguistic roots of the magic they practice. As long as I’m here, you will be expected to not just learn the words of various spells, but learn why those words have the power they do, and where those words came from.

“And frankly,” Aelling had added, with a twisted smirk, “you should count yourselves lucky I’m only asking you to study one language at a time. My N.E.W.T. students need to be able to read Latin, Greek and Sanskrit by Halloween.”

By the time they made it to the end of the day, James was relieved that O’Brien had only asked them for twelve inches on Slowing and Speeding Charms by tomorrow.

“Peter is lucky,” Sirius said, glaring slightly at their friend. “He only had three classes today.”

That made Peter look sad, for some reason, but James had too much homework to try and figure out what that was all about.

“Remus,” he said, finally finding the right book, “have you already started on Professor O’Brien’s essay? I know we talked a little about Slowing Charms last year, but most of the stuff I was skimming during class is total Gobbledegook to me.”

“Sorry,” Remus said through clenched teeth. He was biting the tip of his quill and staring intently into a leather-bound tome almost double the size of their Charms textbook. “I have Arithmancy first thing tomorrow morning and Professor Vector assigned us a dozen problems.”

“That doesn’t sound—”

“I’ve been working on this one off and on since lunch—” Remus snapped, “and I don’t see things getting any better.”

“Okay, okay,” James said, putting up his hands in surrender. “I guess I’ll just have to figure it out myself.”

“Did I hear you say you were working on Charms?”

James looked up to see Lily Evans coming toward them. Finally. Something good was happening to him today.

“I feel like I’m missing something in this year’s edition of _The Standard Book of Spells_ ,” she said, sitting herself down next to Remus and looking straight across at James, “Do any of you remember learning any of the stuff O’Brien was talking about today?”

“Not a bit,” James said. “My guess is that there was something we were supposed to read but never got tested on, so I forgot about it.”

“Well, I brought last year’s edition down from the dorms,” Lily said, pulling a well-worn copy of _Grade 2_ out of her bag. “Any chance you want to flip through that while I look at the chapters O’Brien just assigned again?”

“Absolutely.” James eagerly took the book, vaguely aware of Peter and Sirius looking over his shoulder from either side as he paged through.

“This was quite the day,” Lily said, rummaging through her bag as she got settled. “I’m just glad I only had the one extra class. Isn’t Professor Kettleburn adorable?”

Professor Kettleburn was 80 if he was a day, short an arm and a leg, and had grown his beard out in three different directions, but James wasn’t going to start disagreeing with Lily over it.

“Sure, I guess,” he said, smiling as broad as he could. He suddenly noticed that, in addition to her textbooks and parchment, Lily was taking a pair of glasses out of a small blue case. They looked almost like his own new pair, except with gold metal edges instead of his hard black rims. “Did you get new glasses this summer too, Lily?”

She frowned back at him, lowering her spectacles to give him the Evans Glare he’d gotten very used to by now. “I’ve had reading glasses since I was 10, James. You’ve just never noticed.”

The louder everyone around them laughed, the redder James’s face got.

“Potter!”

Everyone turned to see Kristopher Teak coming toward them. The sixth-year’s new Quidditch Captain’s badge was prominently gleaming from his chest, polished brassy and bright.

James had never been happier to have the focus pulled away from him in his life.

“Hey, uh, Teak,” James said. He wasn’t sure where things sat with him and the Gryffindor Captain. Kris Teak had never looked at him twice when he was a reserve on the squad last year, but he’d been positively chummy on the train home at the end of the year, when Fabian and Gideon Prewett had encouraged him and half the Gryffindor team to join them and James in their compartment. In all honesty, so much had been going on this summer that James hadn’t really thought much about the strange little encounter.

“How’d your first day of classes go?” Teak asked, apparently ignoring the way James and most of the other third-years at their table were gawking at him.

“Um… It was great,” James said. “Busy, but good. And I’ve got homework in everything.”

Teak’s laugh sliced through the common room. “Yeah, third year’s sort of when I remember classes getting particularly mad. I ended up dropping all my electives except Muggle Studies a month in.”

“Oh yeah, Professor Matthews is great,” James said, hoping the boys didn’t feel obliged to mention aloud that he’d been saying the exact opposite at length 10 minutes earlier. “We just had our first class with her today.”

“I mean, she’s no stitch on old Egg,” Teak replied. “But can’t be helped… I heard the most awful rumors about him over the holiday. Why he’s not coming back, I mean.”

James opened his mouth to ask what he meant, but Peter, of all people, interrupted.

“I don’t think we should be talking about Professor Egg like that,” he said, barely looking at Teak. “Professor Dumbledore said it was, um, a family matter, and, uh…”

Teak looked a mix of irritated and bored. James could have murdered Peter.

“Anyway,” his captain said, “I came over here to make sure you knew when tryouts were for the season. We ended up with the first slot on Friday, so I’ll need you on the pitch at 5 sharp.”

James forgot all about everything Peter had just said, and his mind raced forward to the end of the week.

“Of course — I’ve got History of Magic right before, so it’ll be close. But I can always just get up when I need to go and leave. Binns wouldn’t notice if I walked right through him.”

Teak laughed again, and James smiled at the sound of it. “You know, you’re right, he probably wouldn’t. Another class I was thrilled to drop.”

“I’m practically counting the days,” James said.

“Well, I’ll let you get back to your work,” Teak said, starting to step away. “Just wanted to make sure I chatted with you before Friday, made sure you were able to make it to tryouts. I’ll probably put you in the first batch, so you can get a nice warm-up — I’ll really be looking to see how you and Wilson match up with our third.”

“Third?” James had somehow lost the thread of the conversation.

“Third Chaser,” Teak said, looking at him like he was daft. “I’ve got to replace Gideon and Zelda both, you know. If it was just one position, I might not even bother with tryouts — I’d rather just get you on a broomstick and make sure you still remember how to fly it. You three are going to need to spend a lot of time together if we’re going to have a Cup-worthy team this year.”

It suddenly occurred to James that Teak might not be asking him to try out as much as inviting him to attend tryouts for a position the Captain had already appointed him to.

“O-of course,” he quickly stammered. “I’ll, uh, be there right at 5.”

“Brilliant,” Teak said. And then he walked away, as if he hadn’t delivered the most momentous news of James’s life.

James looked around the table, but of the four Gryffindors sitting around, only Remus seemed to be paying attention to him — and his look was significantly more amused than impressed.

“You lot heard that, right?” James said, trying not to crow too loudly in case Teak was still in earshot. “As long as I do well in tryouts, Kris Teak says I’m on the Quidditch team.”

Remus rolled his eyes. “You were already on the team, James.”

“But like properly on the team!” James said. “That’s exciting! Why aren’t you excited?”

“It’s great, James,” Peter said, breaking out a belated smile. “Really.”

“I still don’t properly get Quidditch,” Lily said, finally looking up from her book. “But it seems like Teak shouldn’t be offering you a spot before tryouts, right? Even if there’s not two people who are better than you, you’ve still got to pair well with Blake Wilson and whomever the third Chaser is. And you hate Wilson.”

“I don’t _hate_ him,” James protested. “I just don’t think he’s better than me.”

“Personally, I think you’re just bloody lucky you don’t have detention Friday night,” Sirius said, his expression sulky.

A wave of guilt rushed through James. Professor McGonagall had intercepted the four of them on their way out of lunch in the Great Hall earlier that day to tell the other three boys that she had decided they would be serving their detention at the end of the week.

“I gave it a good long thought over the summer holidays,” she’d said, after James stepped aside just far enough that he could hear every single word. “And it occurred to me that you might forget the severity of your infraction if you are permitted to wait until next month to serve your detention. Since he is the one who found you out-of-bounds, Professor O’Brien has requested that you come to his office Friday evening after dinner, to reorganize his personal library. It seems he’s adapted a Muggle sorting method that he likes better than simply organizing them alphabetically… which I’m sure he will explain to you at great length.”

James wouldn’t be joining Sirius, Remus, and Peter in O’Brien’s office, of course. He’d avoided that due to abandoning them, slipping under his then-secret Invisibility Cloak and waiting until their Charms professor and his graduating N.E.W.T.-level students had finished dragging his friends out of the Cavern.

He’d gotten terribly lucky, it seemed. Teak would not have been thrilled if James was unavailable for tryouts, and he would almost certainly spread the word that they were responsible for Gryffindor’s pre-term points loss out of spite.

But he didn’t feel terribly lucky, the way Sirius and the others were looking at him now.

“What do you have detention for already?” Lily asked, looking down at Sirius suspiciously.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Sirius growled. “Mind your own business.”

Lily frowned. “Fine,” she said, snatching her copy of _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2_ right out of James’s hands. “I was going to talk to Severus about our Charms homework if I didn’t figure it out with you anyway. No time like the present.”

“Lily—”

But she was already halfway gone by the time James said her name.

He didn’t have time to think about it. Without warning, three fourth-year girls James scarcely knew seemed to almost Apparate into view, jockeying for position in the approximate space where Lily had been sitting.

“Potter, did I just hear Kris Teak saying that you were officially on the Quidditch team this year?”

This was the one he knew best, Angie Trelawney. Her mother had been among his father’s early investors, and he’d been to two or three parties at her family’s manor growing up.

In all honestly, her older cousin Sybill had been the more memorable one — every time he saw her, the waifish teenager had gotten odder, adding additional bangles and jewels on top of her shapeless robes and asking anyone who stopped to gawk at her if she could examine their palms. Angie had always been shuffling along behind, hands firmly planted in her pockets, her wavy blonde bob a pale imitation of Sybill’s manic short dome of hair.

Angie wasn’t shuffling now — she was practically in James’s face, the girls behind her leaning in to await his answer.

“Err—” James briefly considered Lily’s earlier comment. “Not…exactly. But probably? I mean, I was the reserve Chaser last year.”

“You were?” asked the girl with short sandy hair perched below Angie’s left ear. “I could have sworn Kris’s mate Darryl was the reserve. Didn’t you tell me that, Angie?”

“Don’t be daft,” Angie replied curtly. “‘Course I knew Jamie was the reserve.”

No one but his dead Great-Aunt Rosaline had ever called him Jamie. Hearing the diminutive out of Angie Trelawney’s mouth as almost as stomach-churning as his great-aunt’s breath had been.

He must have made a face, but Angie misinterpreted it before James even had the chance to lie to her.

“Oh, do you know Doreen and Rebecca?” She indicated the girl on her left first, before pointing to the broad-shouldered brunette beside her.

“I don’t,” James said. He was pretty sure Rebecca was the girl Nabin and Jack were currently making eyes at, but he’d never actually seen the three of them interact — only heard the boys’ increasingly unlikely arguments as to why she was interested in one but not the other.

Remus coughed audibly.

“Oh,” James said. “Right. Uh. These are my mates — Sirius, Remus, Peter.”

“Charmed,” Sirius said drily, not even looking up from his Charms essay.

James weighed the pros and cons of kicking him under the table. He was aware that no older girl had ever talked to them, ever, right?

Doreen was giving Peter an odd look across the table. “Peter… Pettigrew, right? Isn’t your dad…”

Remus interrupted Doreen — rather rudely, to be honest. “Are you three trying out for the team on Friday? I’m sure ‘Jamie’ would be happy to give you some tips.”

Angie let out a tingly peal of laughter that made James feel like a spider was running down his back. “Merlin, no, none of us are trying out. We’d rather be on the sidelines, cheering on the team.”

“I think Dorcas is signed up, isn’t she?” Rebecca asked.

Angie’s mood changed on a time, face contorting into a scowl. “Ugh, she _would_.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” James asked.

Angie was all smiles again, suddenly. “Oh, nothing. Dorcas is just… Well, she’s a little unique, you know. Doesn’t fit in much with the rest of us girls in the year.”

“Oh, sure,” James said, now definitively confused.

“We’re pretty ‘unique’ too,” Sirius said, finally giving the fourth-year girls his full attention. “Not normally the sort to need our own cheering section.”

There was half an insult in there, but if Angie noticed, she didn’t say anything about it.

“Well, I suppose we’d better get back to our own work,” she said, smiling wide enough at James to show teeth. “Don’t worry, the third-year workload gets much easier to manage in a month or two. And if it doesn’t — well, we’re always game to help a member of the Quidditch team. Do our part for Gryffindor and all that.”

Rebecca and Doreen smiled too, a little less broadly, and then followed Angie as she got up and moved toward the fireplace, waving one finger after another as she went.

James had no idea what had just happened, but he was not complaining.

“What was that all about?” Peter said, once the girls were out of earshot.

James opened his mouth to answer, but Sirius beat him to the punch.

“Well, Peter,” he said, closing his Charms textbook to look across the table, “when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much…”

James did kick Sirius under the table this time. “Sod off!” he shouted.

“What? Were you _not_ slack-jawed at the prospect of those fine ladies making your acquaintance? And so convenient, that they noticed you existed for the first time right when Mr. Hogwarts 1973 started talking to you.”

Remus got a case of the giggles, and Peter joined in. It was taking all of James’s self-control not to throw his inkwell at them.

“Grow up,” he said. “Did you miss the part where I get to be on the Gryffindor Quidditch team?”

“I don’t think any one of us could have missed that,” Remus said, finally catching his breath. “I mean, we were sitting here the whole time. Angie Trelawney and her friends had to swoop all the way in from being stuck up Kris Teak’s arse, and they didn’t miss a bit.”

“You’re the worst, you know,” James muttered, face starting to flush as he scrambled to look busy finding a roll of parchment in his bag.

“That we are,” Remus said. “But you like us anyway.”

James had to admit that was true, despite the way they were all trying to wind him up.

But if only he could have thrown his Invisibility Cloak over their heads the second before Angie and her friends showed up…

——

Sirius would have killed a man for a map of Hogwarts right now.

He knew from his class schedule that Ancient Runes was on the sixth floor, but he’d foolishly assumed that — like every other floor of the castle — there were room numbers or signs or something that he could try to use to understand the maddening illogic of the floor plan.

Not so. He’d taken the Grand Staircase up with everyone else, since Remus and Peter were going to Divination and James was too distracted talking about his prospects of being on the Quidditch team to remember he wasn’t going to Divination. But as soon as he’d said his goodbyes and stepped through the marble archway into the giant, shadowy East Wing, he’d quickly realized he’d never truly spent much time on the sixth floor. The only time he could think of was years ago, that night when he had invited himself along on James and Remus’s late-night exploration and they’d almost gotten hexed within an inch of their lives by those prefects they’d caught snogging…

Thinking about Tom Gallagher and Nicholas Bulstrode was not going to get him to Ancient Runes on time. He shook the permanently-scarred-in image out of his brain and turned another corner.

He was 50 percent sure he’d been down this way once before, but either way it was as silent as all the other corridors and halls he’d walked down. He wasn’t expecting Ancient Runes to be an especially popular class, but he thought he’d have found at least another student by now. But this hall was empty, as were the classrooms and storerooms within.

By the time he reached the T-intersection with the six-armed gargoyles for the third time, Sirius had started to seriously contemplate going downstairs to McGonagall’s office and just dropping the class when he finally heard it — the sound of equally panicked footsteps, echoing down the hall to his left.

Sirius hurried in that direction without a second thought. He knew he’d been this way before — the giant portrait of an ugly pirate was hurling another Scottish-inflected insult his way — but he didn’t care. There was no way whoever was around that next corner could be more lost than him… unless Evan Rosier had convinced Ignatius Avery to go hunting for the Chamber of Secrets again, he supposed.

“Hey!” he shouted, as he rounded the bend. “You looking for Classroom 6B too?”

“Oh, thank Uric.”

The boy at the other end of the hall stopped on a sickle, turning to look back at Sirius. The motion somehow seemed to emphasize how gangly he was, thin arms and legs moving akimbo as he pivoted. In his rushing, his brown bangs had fallen slightly in front of his face, but he pushed them back and across in a practiced motion. The eyes were a steel blue Sirius couldn’t stop noticing.

“I haven’t seen anyone except you since I got up here,” Sirius said. “It _is_ on the sixth floor, right?”

“It is,” the boy said, coming closer. “But it’s hard to get to from the Grand Stairwell, apparently. I was just about to go back down to the fifth floor, but if you know a better way—”

“Why the fifth floor?” Sirius asked.

“Classroom 6B is in a hall right off the stairwell to our common room,” the boy said. “I’ve seen older students get off at the sixth floor landing and go that way a bunch of times. But I was coming from a meeting with Professor Sargas up on the seventh floor and I thought I could just… figure it out.”

The other boy must have been a Ravenclaw, Sirius realized belatedly. He knew their Runes class was a double with one of the houses, but all he’d cared about was that it wasn’t Slytherin, and he’d forgotten which of the other two houses it was until now.

“I figured I could just find the Trophy Room, since the hallways are supposed to connect,” the boy continued. “But it’s not where I thought it would be. And I don’t just want to go wandering down random halls…”

“Wait,” Sirius interrupted. “I know how to get to the Trophy Room from here.”

“I thought so too,” his companion said. “But it isn’t where I remember it.”

“That’s because it moves,” Sirius replied, suddenly smiling. “It goes between the third floor and the sixth floor. But on the sixth floor, when it leaves, the hallway on the other end reconnects to the entrance.”

“Shut up. Are you sure?”

“Mostly,” Sirius said, looking around to get his bearings. “But either way, it’s the only chance we have of making it to class on time. Come on!”

The two of them hurried down the hall. His fellow traveler wasn’t joking about knowing the way; Sirius didn’t have to give a word of direction as they wound their way back through the halls of the sixth floor.

Just as he’d suspected, as they turned at the double doors, there was no sign of the Trophy Room’s archway — just a short little hallway with a tight left turn.

“This is it,” Sirius said. “How far is it?”

“Scarcely a step or two,” the other boy said as they went down the hall. “You can practically see the Ravenclaw stairs from the Trophy Room entrance on the other side. I should have at least taken a look around the other side.”

“Well, I’m certainly glad you didn’t,” Sirius said. “I never would have found this place if you hadn’t mentioned the Trophy Room.”

“I guess I’m happy to be of service then.” The boy looked over at Sirius and smiled, his stupid unavoidable eyes peeking out from under his misplaced bangs again.

Just as suspected, 6B was just around the corner — a shabby room with grey marble floors and a blood-red ceiling. Almost every other desk was full when they walked in, mostly populated with Ravenclaw students Sirius didn’t know. The handful of Gryffindors he saw were lumped together on the far end of the room, so even if he wanted to sit by Nabin or Daisy he wouldn’t have been able to. Their professor, a crumbling statue of a man, scarcely seemed to notice them enter, too busy writing “Professor Jarl Ash-Karlsen” in shaky block letters on a dusty chalkboard.

“Thanks again for the help,” Sirius said, eyeballing a desk by itself in the middle of the room. Maybe he could grab Daisy after class and see if—

“You wanna sit together?”

Sirius looked back, and saw the boy was pointing at two adjacent desks in the back row.

“I’m not normally the sit-in-the-back type,” he said, “but it’d be nice to get to know someone new?”

The invitation was more of a question, and clearly one he wasn’t used to asking. But that didn’t mean it was a bad idea.

“See, I am the sit-in-the-back type,” Sirius said. “So I can be sure to give you some pointers.”

His new classmate’s face lit up. “Brilliant. I’m Barry, by the way. Barry Stebbins.”

“Sirius Black,” he said, quickly shaking Barry’s hand. “Looking forward to learning about some runes with you.”

——

If Mina Dawlish didn’t get it together soon, James was going to throw himself out of the nearest window.

“P-p-pay no attention to this,” she said, quickly stowing her wand back up her sleeve. “It’s, a, um, just a stick. A regular stick.”

“That’s no stick! There were little sparks coming out of it, and now my tea is completely gone. What do you think you’re playing at?”

Professor Matthews’ question was particularly apt; it was terribly unclear what Mina thought she was “playing at.”

She was _supposed_ to be pretending to have a normal interaction with a “real Muggle” — Professor Matthews, of course, playing the other role. Things were far from normal, though. In the ten minutes since their Muggle Studies instructor had complimented her on her “unusually violet cloak,” Mina had committed at least three minor breaches of the International Statute of Secrecy — wait, no, make it four; she just asked how to get to Diagon Alley from here.

When Matthews had told them yesterday that they’d be role-playing a few scenarios through the end of next week as introductory exercises, James had thought it would be a good change from Matthews’ deathly dull approach thus far. He had really underestimated how stupid some of his fellow purebloods were.

“I think I’d best call a constable,” Professor Matthews said, standing up abruptly from the small tea-table she’d conjured at the beginning of class. “If you’re not a madwoman, then I certainly am.”

“No, wait,” Mina said, bolting up herself and taking her wand out again. “I can fix this. Hold still while I remember what the incantation is for a Memory Charm.”

Matthews’ demeanor instantly shifted, from budding socialite to exasperated professor. “Let’s save me a trip to St. Mungo’s. Please sit down, Mina.”

Mina promptly returned to her chair at the front of the room with a plop. James couldn’t resist the urge to burst into laughter, joined shortly after by all the other students in the room except Mina’s friend Helena, who turned around to glare at them all.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Stop laughing! This is harder than it looks!”

“It’s really not,” said Trix Bellicose, rolling her eyes at Imogen Roberts beside her.

“These dolts know they can just… not talk about being witches, right?” Sirius whispered to James and the others. “I mean, sure, I’ve never talked to a Muggle either, but it cannot be that hard.”

Both Remus and Peter looked at each other, the same expression of pity on their faces.

“Sirius,” Remus finally whispered back, “sometimes you can’t stop talking to _us_ about being a wizard. And we’re also wizards.”

“All right, everyone, let’s clap for Mina. Very nice, Mina.”

James begrudgingly joined in with the others. 

“I think we have enough time for one more student this afternoon,” Matthews said, pushing a bit of strawberry-blonde hair back behind her ear. “Boys, none of you have gone yet. Who’s feeling brave?”

James, Remus, Sirius and Peter all looked back and forth between each other quickly.

“Come on, Sirius,” Remus said. “Time to put your money where your mouth is.”

Sirius went pale, slightly, and James suddenly realized their friend might be experiencing a rare bit of stage fright.

“I’ll do it,” he said suddenly. “Better now than to wait all weekend,” he added by way of explanation, though Remus and Peter frankly looked as excited to see him go up as they’d been at the prospect of Sirius doing so.

Which was not very encouraging.

“Thank you, James,” Professor Matthews said. “Come on up then, sit next to me.”

She went to the table again, and James shuffled up too, sitting opposite her.

“Now, we’ll need a new scenario,” she said, turning slightly to look at the rest of the room. “Does anyone have any suggestions, or…”

James had never thought about how old any of his professors were before, but sitting a foot and a half from this one, he realized that was because his other professors were all actually old — and Jo Matthews was clearly, clearly not. The only member of the staff in the entire castle who was anywhere near as young as her was Madam Pomfrey, and she was so bundled up under robes and her nurse’s cap she could have been 80 for all it mattered.

Not Jo Matthews. Sitting at his desk, James hadn’t truly noticed the modern, loose cut of his professor’s navy robes, or the fact that her hair was held back with a simple black ribbon, or that her nails were painted as red as a Gryffindor banner, or that she was surprisingly, sharply, alarmingly pretty.

In short, it was making it _very_ difficult to remember what he was doing up here.

“Why don’t you try to order a train ticket?”

“I’msorrywha?”

The entire class burst into laughter. James’s face was hot all over, like he’d just sat down in front of a fireplace.

He was so deeply regretting this.

“A train ticket,” Professor Matthews repeated. “That’s a lovely scenario to interact, I think.”

“Err… when am I gonna need to buy a Muggle train ticket?” James asked, acutely aware he sounded just like all the other pureblood dolts who’d gone before him.

“You don’t think you’ll ever need to ride a train other than to Hogwarts? What if you need to travel a long distance someday?”

“I’ll ride a broomstick,” James replied.

“What if there’s a storm?” Matthews responded, an answer already at the ready. “Or if you’ve got luggage?”

“There’s the Floo?” James guessed. “Or Apparition. I could Apparate, if I was old enough.”

“There’s plenty of places you could be going that aren’t on the Floo Network,” she countered, “and plenty of places a witch or wizard can’t just Apparate into. And imagine you’re traveling with multiple people. Think about yourself in 20 or 30 years, taking your kids into the country on a day trip.”

The very attractive Professor Jo Matthews discussing James’s potential children was uncomfortably bringing up memories of the horrible, seemingly endless talk his father had subjected him to in August about the birds and the billywigs, and now his cheeks were even hotter.

“Or,” his professor said, seemingly oblivious to his discomfort, “consider the apparently impossible notion that you might have an interest in taking a leisurely trip on a train exclusively for its own value, and that our wizardly notions of instant gratification might not be—“

“Alright, alright,” James said, throwing up his hands. His father had used the word “gratification” in their Talk at least seven more times than was necessary, including during one mortifying reference to his parents’ honeymoon in Australia. “Let’s buy a train ticket, please.”

“Capital,” Professor Matthews said, smiling. “I’ll play clerk. You talk first, James. Remember the Three Rules of Muggle Interaction — be direct about what you want, keep small talk simple, and don’t panic if the conversation goes another direction.”

“Sure,” James said. He wasn’t sure he could have a decent conversation with a statue, at the moment, so this was _bound_ to go swimmingly.

And even if it didn’t, it couldn’t go that poorly, right?

——

“Hey,” Sirius said, the memory popping back into his head again, “remember yesterday when James asked Professor Matthews if he could buy a ticket to Sexy?”

The sound of the entire lunch table bursting into laughter almost — but not quite — drowned out James’s spluttering protests.

“Come on, you guys!” James shouted, blushing bright red again. “I was trying to say Sussex. I was trying to say Sussex!”

“Sure, James,” Lily said between giggles. “Sussex. Riiiiight.”

“C’mon, you weren’t even there, Evans!”

“I was not,” she replied. “But it has made for tremendously good first-week-of-school gossip. Much more interesting than The Case of Whoever Lost Gryffindor All Those House Points, or that first-year who blew off half her finger playing Exploding Snap.”

“I heard it wasn’t even, like, an important finger,” Sirius said quickly. Everyone at this table except his friends thought his detention later tonight with Remus and Peter was due to making fun of Professor O’Brien’s general rotundity, and he’d like to keep it that way. “It was her left pinky. Or maybe the right. Either way, I’d have just asked Pomfrey to leave it like that; it’d make me look positively vicious.”

“Did you lot see the _Prophet_ this morning?” Mary MacDonald said, polishing off her pumpkin pasty. “The head of Magical Law Enforcement says they might put Phineas Steele back into Azkaban because— OW, Daisy, what the hell!”

Sirius immediately realized Daisy Mandel had jabbed Mary in the ribs, and it wasn’t much of a surprise why. Across from him, Peter had gone gray at the mention of Phineas Steele.

“Seriously,” James said, jumping into the conversational lull, “like none of you have never said something stupid in front of class. Jack, last year you asked Professor Egg a question about nipples instead of Nifflers.”

“Oh sure,” Jack said. “But I wasn’t drooling over Mordicus Egg when I said that.”

“I was not drooling!”

“I think I’m gonna head up to Divination a little early,” Peter said. His voice was soft, but every head swiveled toward him anyway. “I was gonna talk to Professor Morrigan about the reading she assigned.”

“I’ll come with you,” Remus said immediately. “I had a question too.”

“Sure,” Peter said, shuffling off without waiting for Remus.

From the glare Remus gave Mary as he stood up, their russet-haired classmate was lucky the first full moon of the year was next week.

“I can’t believe you said that,” Daisy hissed across the table, too quiet for anyone but Sirius to hear. He pretended to be very interested in James’s increasingly weak argument that he did not have a crush on Professor Matthews.

“What, I’m just not supposed to talk about it?” Mary said. “I didn’t say anything about his dad.”

“You were going to,” Daisy replied, arms folded. “You read that article _out loud_ this morning, Mary, so I know what you were going to say was that they’re putting Steele back in Azkaban because he won’t tell them where he thinks Peter’s dad went.”

“Okay, so what if I was? You think _Peter_ doesn’t know where his dad went? Please.”

“Mary—”

“His dad’s basically a bloody _Death Eater_ , Mandel. He wants to make sure people like you and me and our families get wiped off the planet.”

“Peter’s not like that.”

“You don’t know what Peter’s like because—”

“Hey, Daisy, we’re gonna be late.”

Daisy jumped at the sound of Kiran Qasid’s voice. The other girl was suddenly right there behind her; Sirius worried his own little jump had given away that he was eavesdropping. But none of the girls seemed to notice.

“Right, sorry,” Daisy said, “I keep forgetting how long it takes to get to our Runes classroom from here.”

“Isn’t that funny?” Kiran smiled down at them all, completely unaware of the conversation Daisy and Mary had been having. “I walked up to the top of North Tower with Mina and Helena the other day, when they went to ask Professor Morrigan if she could interpret that dream they had about stabbing each other, and it didn’t take nearly as long.”

Sirius really hoped Professor Morrigan had encouraged them to take the dream as a literal suggestion.

“Sure, the North Tower’s on the other side of the castle, but at least you can just take the Grand Staircase and that one long corridor to get there. There’s all those terrible winding corridors on the sixth floor…”

“I still say it’s faster to stay on this floor and go down past the Transfiguration department.” Nabin was standing up now too, folding a turkey and brie sandwich up in a napkin. “There’s that diagonal stairway over there, the one with the window that looks into the upper level of the library.”

“We could try that today,” Kiran said. “It won’t take us any longer at least.”

She and Nabin started walking, but Daisy hesitated. “Sirius…”

Sirius felt a ripple of discomfort go down his neck as Nabin and Kiran turned back to look at him, dismay just barely hiding behind their half-smiles. Daisy, Nabin and Kiran were the only other Gryffindors in Ancient Runes with him, but they were scarcely friends. Sure, Daisy was chummy with Peter, and Nabin shared a room with him, for Merlin’s sake, but Sirius hadn’t been surprised when they got up and left without him at the end of their first class earlier that week, and neither he nor they had made an effort to sit together in their second session the next morning.

Of course, it was one thing to politely give each other space, and another to pointedly not walk to the same classroom together.

Brain moving a mile a minute, Sirius tried to look past Daisy without being too obvious. At the long table opposite theirs, he could still see Barry Stebbins talking to another boy, reflexively pushing back those bangs of his.

“You lot can go on ahead without me,” Sirius said, reaching for a sandwich he really didn’t need. “I’ll be along shortly.”

Nabin and Kiran looked back at each other with a grin — not fake ones, this time — and then started walking away. Daisy trailed at their heels, waving quickly to Sirius before hurrying up behind them.

“Aren’t they in Ancient Runes with you?” James said. Apparently he’d given up convincing the others — Jack and Lily were now muttering to each other about what they were buying him and Jo Matthews as a wedding present.

“Yeah,” Sirius said, “but I think I’m gonna walk up with Barry Stebbins. He’s not really friends with anyone in class either.”

That wasn’t strictly true — practically Barry’s whole house was in Ancient Runes — but James wouldn’t know or care.

“Ah yes, your new mate Barry.” James rolled his eyes. “Should I start being _jealous_ of your new best friend?”

“Oh, save it for your new girlfriend,” Sirius snapped. “I’ll see you in History of Magic?”

“No, I’m cutting,” James said. “Remember, I’ve got Quidditch tryouts?”

“I seem to remember Kristopher Teak telling you tryouts were _after_ History of Magic.”

James looked sheepish all of a sudden. “Well, I mean… I’m not gonna be any good if I’ve been sitting in Binns’s class sleeping for an hour, you know?”

“I suppose not,” Sirius said as he stood up. It was sort of irritating that James was planning to abandon him and the others with Binns, but it wasn’t like they could all skip out on class at the same time. Probably. Binns was about as perceptive as the wall he walked through to start every class period. “Best of luck then!”

“Yeah, you too… with the, uh, runes or whatever.”

Sirius felt terribly weird walking over to the Ravenclaw table. It wasn’t like he was trying to be friends with a Slytherin or anything, but Ravenclaw House had always seemed fairly cold to him and the other Gryffindors. Barry was probably the first member of the house he’d encountered who didn’t look down their nose at him the whole time they were talking.

As it turned out, Sirius didn’t even have to make it all the way over — by the time he turned to walk around the Gryffindor table, Barry had already seen him, and was standing himself. Sirius waited halfway in between, scuffing his shoes back and forth on the stones.

“Hey,” he said, once Barry was within earshot. “Figured we could walk up to Professor Ash-Karlsen’s classroom together?”

“Works for me,” Barry said. He was grinning at Sirius, teeth and all. “We can quiz each other on number rune names on the way up. I keep forgetting which is 6 and which is 7.”

The two Sirius was having trouble remembering were 4 and 9, so that worked out well enough for him. He and Barry went back and forth all the way up to the sixth floor — this time, getting off the Grand Staircase a floor early, so Barry could show him where the stairs to the Ravenclaw common room were. Sure enough, as soon as they stepped off on the next landing, there was that grey-and-red room again, students just starting to walk in.

Sirius noted, with a smirk, that Nabin, Kiran, and Daisy didn’t find their way there for another five minutes.

As Professor Ash-Karlsen shuffled up to his podium, Sirius finished telling Barry about the summer his family went out to Cornwall — Regulus had nearly drowned trying to follow what he swore was a mermaid but was probably just a fish — and pulled his heavy, mauve rune dictionary out of his bag. “Guess I’ll see you on the other side of this lecture,” he said.

“If we survive,” Barry said, with a rueful smile.

When Sirius had signed up for Ancient Runes at the end of last term, his decision was half thinking Remus was going to take the class with him, half hoping his parents might actually be impressed with him for taking three electives, and a smidge wanting to finally figure out how to read the curse words his Uncle Cygnus had carved in runic all over 12 Grimmauld Place.

But even though Remus finally gave in to James’s complaining and decided to take Muggle Studies instead with the rest of them, and Sirius’s exploits at Bella’s wedding made it clear that extra coursework was not going to improve Walburga and Orion’s opinion of him anytime soon… the subject had started to grow on Sirius anyway. He’d always liked the way runes _looked_ , all sharp edges and mystery. The prospect of actually learning about them — getting to read an ancient text, carving enchantments into stone, laying down a protective circle in the dust — it scratched some itch in the back of his mind he hadn’t even known was there.

That was why it was so bloody awful that Ash-Karlsen taught with the urgency and speed of a drunken snail. Sirius didn’t truly care when he was sitting through a boring History of Magic lecture, or when Professor Sargas waxed poetic about “the individual majesty of each of Saturn’s lovely rings”. But this was something he was actually interested in — and having to learn it all bit by bit was excruciating.

Today, Ash-Karlsen was supposed to be giving them a brief primer on the runic alphabet before setting them loose to translate a handful of circled passages from the truly ancient copies of _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_ that materialized on their desks at the beginning of class. But first, he had to tell them a story about the first time he read the original runic text, when he was a student himself. In the ‘80s.

“The 1880s.” Sirius hissed at Barry across the aisle. “I have grandparents younger than Ash-Karlsen.”

“The men of the House of Stebbins are encouraged to marry young,” Barry whispered back, a disgusted look on his face. “I have _great_ -grandparents younger than him.”

That story turned into a story about Ash-Karlsen accidentally forgetting to attend two consecutive weddings while out at a dig site in Norway — _his_ wedding, both times — and then by the time he finally got around to telling them about the actual runes…

The boom of the end-of-class bell was punctuated by the screech of Ash-Karlsen’s chalk on the board, as he broke off halfway through drawing the rune Ur.

“Darn it all,” Ash-Karlsen rasped. “Been telling Dumbledore since he became headmaster, this class needs to be longer…”

A Ravenclaw girl with silver-rimmed glasses raised her hand quickly. “Did you still want us to do these translations for next week, Professor?”

“What?” Ash-Karlsen said, almost sounding surprised to hear another student speak. “Oh, Miss Shacklebolt. Yes, I think it would be good to keep on track with homework, even if we’re a little behind in class. Why don’t you all partner up? That’ll make it a bit easier, for your first big project.”

Up near the front of the class, Sirius could see his fellow Gryffindors putting their heads together, glancing back at him furtively. He didn’t wait to see which one of them was going to be left odd man out and get stuck with him.

“So obviously we should be partners,” Sirius said to Barry, loud enough for the others to hear. “That okay with you?”

“Sure,” Barry said. “I was gonna ask you if you didn’t ask me.”

“Neat,” Sirius said. It seemed like most of the class had partnered up now and were heading out the door; Nabin had moved away from the others and cornered a pale, particularly forlorn-looking Ravenclaw girl who seemed to have not been picked.

Sirius had a free period next, so he followed Barry out of class, heading back down the Ravenclaw stairwell toward the ground floor of the castle. “So, how do you want to do this?” he asked. “Meet in the library or something? Otherwise I know of a couple good abandoned classrooms nobody else seems to have found.”

“Let’s do that,” Barry said. “Classrooms, I mean. Going down to the library the first weekend of class and taking up every table is practically a Ravenclaw House tradition at this point so it’ll be loads easier to get work done if we go somewhere else. Besides… I study better when there’s less people around. Want to just meet up tonight, after dinner?”

“Sure,” Sirius said automatically, and then his brain caught up with his mouth. “Shite. No, I can’t tonight.”

“Oh,” Barry said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume you didn’t already have plans with friends, I just thought—”

“No, that’s not… It would be great to hang out tonight,” Sirius said. “I just — I’ve got detention.”

Barry looked over at him oddly. “Huh,” he said. “You don’t seem like the type who’d have detention the first week of classes.”

“Thanks? I think?” Sirius rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, trying to think of something less dimwitted to say.

“What happened?” Barry asked. “It can’t have been anything that bad. We’ve only been back at Hogwarts a week. And I haven’t heard of any proper mischief happening around the castle yet.”

“Well, it didn’t happen this week,” Sirius said softly. He looked side-to-side quickly, but he and Barry had taken a side stair a few minutes back and were basically alone, so he slowed to a stop. “And you shouldn’t have heard anything about this anyway. McGonagall promised not to make it public, since…”

He should stop talking, he knew it, but he couldn’t help himself.

“You know how Gryffindor started the year behind everyone else in house points? Well… That was me. Me and my friends. We got caught out-of-bounds right after the end-of-term feast with a ton of Butterbeer, so McGonagall took off points from this year’s total instead of last year. And gave us all detentions too. We’ve got to redecorate O’Brien’s whole office or something.”

As the words came out of his mouth, Sirius watched Barry, studying him. He was expecting the other boy’s face to light up with amusement at Sirius’s misfortune, or delight at learning a great bit of Hogwarts gossip, or disgust to discover his new seatmate was a degenerate curfew-breaker…

“Oh, man,” Barry said, lips turned down into a frown. “That’s rough, Sirius. Taking off points before the year’s even started is just mean.”

“Uh…” Sirius hadn’t expected sympathy, and he scrambled to put the words of a response in the right grammatical order. “Yeah, it— I guess it is. McGonagall takes it personal, sometimes, when Gryffindors step out of line.”

“Well,” Barry said, adjusting the strap on his bag as they started walking again, “tonight’s out, but why don’t we plan on meeting during the day tomorrow? Then we’ll have plenty of time to get the translating done — and you can tell me all about your punishment for being a teenage ne’er-do-well.”

Sirius laughed. “I can do that,” he said. “We can meet in the Great Hall? But not until lunch; I always sleep through breakfast on Saturdays.”

“Same,” Barry said, flashing a cheeky grin. “Bad habits die hard.”

He looked at his wristwatch suddenly, seeming to realize how long they’ve been walking.

“Rats, I’m late for Herbology…”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have kept you,” Sirius said. “Go on, get to your class. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yes, you will,” Barry said. He smiled again, gave Sirius a little wave, and then broke into a half-run, his shoes clicking on the stone tiles as he hurried to the next stairwell. Sirius watched him as he went, lost in half-formed thoughts.

Why in the name of Morgan le Fay had he said all that?

——

James pushed his copy of _Quixotic Quidditch Tactics_ away for the last time. He’d been flipping through the book over and over, barely reading a line or two, getting distracted and imagining all the ways he could fail, and then leaping up with a jolt to look over at the clock and see it still wasn’t time for him to go down to the pitch… and that everyone else in the library was glaring at him.

“Stupid book,” he muttered. “Stupid tryouts. Stupid wind.”

He’d gone out toward the broomshed after lunch wrapped up, thinking he might try to sneak his Nimbus 1313 out and do some flying about the castle under his Invisibility Cloak. But he turned back halfway down the lawn. Tempestuous, blustering winds were in the air, so strong they practically turned the robes he was wearing inside out. If he’d tried to go up in his cloak — well, he’d have barely been able to keep the cloak on his back, much over his broomstick.

It was a dumb idea anyway, James told himself. He’d barely have been able to steer, holding the cloak down around him.

But he would have liked to get out on the broomstick before the pitch opened up for the afternoon, even so. Probably wouldn’t have calmed his nerves, but at least it’d have been something to do. He’d never wanted to be sitting in History of Magic before, but if he wasn’t trying to be at the pitch right at 5…

James looked up at the clock again. 4:40. It would take him about 10 minutes or so to walk from the library out the door and down to the pitch. So he just had to wait another five minutes and then…

Screw it.

He got to his feet, the chair’s legs banging against the stone floor, and ignored the grumbling of his fellow students and Madam Flood as he hurried past.

This was worth being early for. There weren’t many things James would think that of, but this was one of them.

His mind raced as he went through the halls. There was no reason to be worried. Kris Teak had basically told him the spot was his. He was going to be in the first batch, just to check, and then Teak was going to figure out who was the best third person to be with him and Blake Wilson.

Except he hated Wilson, of course. What if that came out on the pitch? What if James couldn’t fake it, and Teak took one look at the two of them flying together and axed James on the spot?

Then again, maybe Wilson would be the one to get axed. The team hadn’t done particularly well last year — though notably not poorly enough that James ever got subbed in, but that was a different issue — so maybe Teak would decide to scrap the whole lineup and start fresh.

Sure, and maybe Madam Hooch would show up with dyed green hair for their first match.

Blake Wilson was going to be in. That was pretty obvious. Someone else was going to have to join the team too. Could James really count on Teak’s word? Assume he wouldn’t be dazzled by two new faces in the crowd?

He’d been a reserve all last year, and had been following Gryffindor’s Quidditch team practically since the minute he was sorted, but James still didn’t have a clue. The team captain was an enigma to him. He knew Teak was an exceptional Beater — stronger by far than his counterpart, Eridani Flume. He’d even been mentioned as a potential acquisition for one of England’s professional teams in _Seeker Weekly_ over the summer, rare for someone only in his sixth year.

But James didn’t have a clue whether he could take him at his words from earlier in the week. The only thing he knew for certain is that Kris Teak had absorbed every drop of Gideon Prewett’s fanaticism about winning the Quidditch Cup, and he’d do or say whatever it took to get there.

Yeah, James couldn’t just show up. He needed to fly better than he’d ever done before.

No pressure.

He wasn’t actually the first one to show up, as it turned out. A tall, auburn-haired witch and a fourth-year boy he recognized as Blake Wilson’s mate Denis Portch were standing a broomstick’s length apart, pointedly ignoring each other. James tried not to think about how much Wilson might want to get his friend on the team as he went into the broomshed and found his Nimbus, though he did start to anxiously rub at the gilded letters spelling “James Potter” on the handle with his thumb.

Teak and the rest of the team came out of the locker room at 5 sharp, studying James and the handful of students who’d joined in the interim. James took note of the ones who got a smile — himself, Portch, a pretty dark-skinned girl with a short halo of black hair he didn’t know, and Alice Prewett, the sixth-year prefect who was still dating Frank Longbottom. The tall woman who’d been there before James arrived got a full smirk, and Teak turned to whisper something to Eridani Flume that made the other boy laugh.

James was _really_ regretting his decision to brag so much about his prospects this week.

There were about a dozen and a half students who showed up in all, most of them looking as nervous as James felt. He was the only third-year in the group, he realized — about half of their number were second-years, and the rest were all older than him. He did not know how to feel about that.

“Alright, first things first,” Teak shouted, surveying the lot of them. “Those of you hoping for an unexpected opening in the positions of Beater, Keeper, or Seeker — better luck next year.

“I’m looking for Chasers only — two full-time spots. _Maybe_ a reserve, if — and only if —I’m particularly impressed with a third person. Do _not_ waste my time by trying to become that third person unless you actually think you can play more than one position in a pinch. That means you, Rakepick.”

There was a moment’s hesitation — during which the auburn-haired witch silently glared at Teak as if she was considering lighting him on fire — and then six or seven of their assembled party broke away from the group, muttering back and forth to each other as they walked away. Rakepick was the last to go, finally breaking eye contact with Teak and stalking back toward the castle.

James surveyed the remaining prospects. Most of the second-years had stayed. James didn’t know if that was good or bad.

“Right,” Teak said, clapping his hands. “Here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to put you in groups of three, and you’ll play a set against the rest of the team. Wilson will mostly be playing defense, but I’m not going to jump in and stop him if he decides to make a play for the other goalposts — that’s your job. Don’t make a fool of yourself in the first 15 minutes, you might get to stay out here a while.”

One of the second-years had started to twitch anxiously, James could see, but his friend elbowed him in the ribs. It made James think of last year’s tryouts, when Sirius had come down with him to give it a shot. And then there was a stab of guilt, as he thought of his friends up in the castle, shelving Professor O’Brien’s books.

He couldn’t think about that. He had to focus.

Teak had taken out the sign-up sheet from the common room, and was looking back and forth between it and them. “First group! James Potter. Dorcas Meadowes. And whichever one of you is Murtagh. Get up in the air, and we’ll go on my whistle.”

“Murtagh” turned out to be the second-year James had seen practically vibrating with anxiety, and he wasn’t any stabler off the ground than on it. Meadowes, on the other hand, was exuding all the confidence James wished he had at the moment. She was one of the girls who Teak had been happy to see, the one with the small afro. She looked even prettier a few yards off the ground, wind tousling her hair.

“Nice broom,” she said, as he came to a stop beside her, waiting for Teak’s go. “The 1313, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. He was surprised she’d been able to tell so quickly; all the Nimbuses looked identical to him at first glance… and some of the other brands too, if he was being honest. “Are you flying one too?”

She surprised James by laughing out loud. “Merlin, no. I prefer a broom with personality, Potter. And Thunderbolts have plenty of that.”

If by personality, she meant temperamentality… The only thing James knew about the new Thunderbolt line was that the _Prophet_ writer who’d reviewed them last summer had to quit the paper because afterwards the sight of a broomstick made him queasy. But he wouldn’t complain about his competition preferring less-than-standard equipment, no matter how nice she looked on it.

Teak suddenly swept up beside them, a Quaffle in his hands and a whistle around his neck. Since they’d gotten off the ground, he’d done something to his normally curly hair to make it stand out in peaks in every direction, a perfect mockery of Madam Hooch. Meadowes snorted so hard James was legitimately concerned she might fall off her broom.

“Players in position!” Teak shouted. James adjusted slightly so that he and Meadowes were separated by Murtagh. _Quixotic Quidditch Tactics_ said the weakest player should fly in the center of a three-Chaser formation. He did not want to look like the weakest Chaser.

Wilson was directly across from them now, eyes on the Quaffle in Teak’s hand. James had assumed Isaac Langley, the team’s Seeker, would be on the sidelines, but he was there too, hovering next to Wilson like a fellow Chaser. All the better. Flying circles around Wilson alone would look too easy. Langley was probably just there to be someone for Wilson to pass to if he was getting jammed up, which would give James the opportunity to—

The whistle blew.

While he was thinking about embarrassing Wilson, Wilson had embarrassed him. His rival blurred before him, streaking up at the Quaffle the Quidditch Captain had thrown high in the air.

But it was only an instant’s mistake. A second later, James was moving too, the world blurring as his eyes darted up. There was the lumpy red circle, stark against the blue-turning-magenta sunset sky; there was Wilson, reaching for it; there was a Bludger, a blurry black comet in the distance; there was Meadowes; there was Murtagh…

There was Murtagh, somehow faster than all of them, a small hand latching onto the Quaffle’s handhold, a cry of delight breaking out of the second-year’s throat.

And then there was Wilson again, never breaking pace, arcing over Murtagh’s head and effortlessly snatching the Quaffle right out of his grasp.

“No!!” Murtagh cried, and James thought for a minute he was going to tumble to the ground. He hesitated for a long moment, ready to try and catch the younger boy in midair, and by the time he remembered that wasn’t his job, Wilson was already gone, arcing toward the undefended goalposts on the other side.

Cursing Murtagh under his breath, James wheeled around, prepared to zoom after Wilson. But someone else had beat him to it.

Moving in zig-zag patterns that made him dizzy to look at, Meadowes was already on Wilson, darting around him as they moved toward the far side of the field. Even from this far, it was clear Wilson was never going to get a shot off without her smacking the Quaffle out of the air, and even if Langley hadn’t been way back, James couldn’t see a way the other boy could pass it either. Wilson’s best bet was to wait for Meadowes to get tired, and then—

A dozen yards away from the two, James watched Meadowes stop on a dime, right in Wilson’s path. He could just barely hear the foul curse come out of Wilson’s mouth as he pulled up hard on his broomstick, and see the smile on Meadowes’s face as she swung an arm out and knocked the Quaffle loose.

James was shocked, but he didn’t let that slow him up this time. As soon as he saw Meadowes’s arm move, he had changed direction, dropping down, down, down until he was right below the Quaffle, snatching it out of the sky.

As he turned, sailing toward their goalposts, he could hear Meadowes laugh with delight above him. He smiled in spite of himself. Sure, she was the competition. But damn if she wasn’t good competition.

The rest of their fifteen minutes went by in a blur. James remembered scoring on a minute or two after capturing the Quaffle — Langley never got anywhere near him, and Wilson couldn’t break away from Meadowes’s close coverage — and then the rest of the scrimmage was a series of passes back-and-forth, with alternating interceptions and two near-miss collisions with the Bludger, but no more goals.

As the sound of Teak’s whistle bounced between his ears, James started to float back down to the ground with no idea how he’d truly done. True, he was the only one in the group who’d scored, but Meadowes’s flying had been significantly better, and he’d only scored because she knocked the ball in his direction. Would that count for more in Teak’s book?

From above, the Gryffindor Captain didn’t give any indication. “Nice work,” he said. “Next group: Marlene McKinnon, Camryn Leon, and Denis Portch!”

Meadowes and Murtagh didn’t say a word to him when they landed, so James went off a ways to stand alone, observing the remaining scrimmages.

It was clear all the second-years were as out of their league as Murtagh had been. Wilson flew circles around all of them except McKinnon, who managed to intercept a pass at the very end of their game and might have even scored if they’d gotten another five minutes in the air.

Portch was appallingly bad, which made him feel good, but both Trystan Stevens and Alice Prewett looked fantastic, which made him feel lousy. With a nervous shift of his stomach, James wondered how close the female prefect and her distant cousins truly were; there was something of Gideon’s style in her flying.

At the end of an hour, Teak dismissed all the second-years except McKinnon, along with Portch and Leon. There were just five of them left now, standing single-file on the lawn: Marlene McKinnon, Alice Prewett, Trystan Stevens, Dorcas Meadows and himself. The rest of the team was leaving too, except for Wilson.

“Congratulations,” Teak said, genuinely smiling. “All five of you have impressed me today. But now I want to see how you fly together, as a team. So we’re going to scrimmage again. Thirty minutes. No Keepers, no Beaters. Three-on-three. Sound good?”

James’ mind flashed back to the conversation he’d had with Teak at the beginning of the week. He’d told James that he wanted to find a third Chaser to go with him and Wilson. So this made sense. The two of them would get paired up, along with Teak’s first pick. If any of the other three impressed him more, they’d get switched in; if not, that was the team. Simple. He just had to win one match.

“Wilson’ll be on one of the teams, to even things out,” Teak said, and the boy in question stepped forward. “With him… Let’s put Prewett, for sure.”

That made sense, James supposed. Meadowes had looked impressive in the air, but James had been focused on his own flying then. From the ground, it was clear Prewett was the better flyer than—

“Stevens, why don’t you go over there with her?”

The whole pitch fell away beneath James’s feet.

“Potter, Meadowes, McKinnon: You’ll be the other team. Each of you gets five minutes to put your heads together, come up with any strategy you like. Then it’s up in the air.”

Teak blew his whistle again, and Wilson’s group immediately moved off to the side, Prewett and Stevens both talking over each other. With considerably less excitement, James followed Meadowes and McKinnon the other way, dragging his broomstick on the ground behind him.

“Alright,” Meadowes said. “What do we think? What’s the plan?”

“Mostly not to embarrass ourselves,” James said. “That’s my plan, at least.”

“Great input,” she deadpanned. “Seriously, Potter.”

“I am being serious,” James said. “You think it’s a good sign that Teak didn’t put us on the same team with the guy who already has a spot on the team?”

“I don’t know what kind of sign it is,” Meadowes replied, her tone growing heated, “but I do know that we only have five minutes to strategize. And I want one of those two spots beside Wilson. Which means I am not interested in sitting here worrying about whether Kristopher Teak thinks I’m good enough for this team yet. I’m only interested in proving to him that I am. Are you going to help me do that, or are you going to shut up and stay out of my way?”

Well, what was he going to say to that?

“Fine,” James said, looking over his shoulder at the others. “But I’m just saying, we’ve got our work cut out for us. I assume you were watching those two fly earlier?”

“I was,” Meadowes said. “And you know what else I saw, Potter? I saw that neither of them paid a lick of attention to the other two fliers on their side.”

“So?” James said. “They both got stuck on teams with second-years who didn’t know what they were doing. Er, no offense.”

“I’m not offended,” McKinnon said. “My baby brother could fly better than the lot of them, and he’s 8. What’s your point, Meadowes?”

“They’re not team players,” she replied. “They’re trying to show off for Teak. I’m not interested in showing off.”

“Could’ve fooled me with that zig-zagging earlier,” James said. “I think Wilson’s still dizzy.”

Meadowes looked down a bit sheepishly. “Well… I might have been showing off a little bit. But that won’t get any of us on the team. We want to be on the real team? The three of us need to be our own team, right here and right now. Deal?”

“Deal!” McKinnon shouted, before blushing with embarrassment at her exuberance.

James immediately thought of Gideon Prewett on the train home last summer, telling him “Chaser isn’t a solo position.”

“Deal,” he said, smiling. “So what’s the plan, teammate?”

They only had a few minutes left in their huddle, but it was enough. When Teak’s whistle blew again, James had recovered one of his favorite things: his boundless, beaming self-confidence — or, at least, most of it.

By the end of the 30 minute scrimmage, he had the rest.

Every time Wilson, Stevens, or Prewett managed to get the Quaffle, the other three were able to get it back in a matter of minutes, aggressively darting in and out of the Quaffleholder’s path or swooping in at the last minute to deflect a shot at the goalposts. As Dorcas suspected, neither Stevens or Prewett would pass to each other — wary of their competition showing them up — which meant they only had to keep their eye on Wilson. He came closest to scoring on them — but James barely managed to deflect his shot both times, the Quaffle rebounding off of his fingers with a jolt of pain.

James and his teammates didn’t have the same problem.

In the end, they only scored twice — James at the start of the scrimmage and Meadowes at the end. Nothing to be particularly proud of, if this was a real game, but they hadn’t truly been intending to rack up the scoreboard.

The thing they wanted to prove was that they could be a team. And as far as he could tell, they did.

The longest James would guess he ever held onto the Quaffle was two, maybe three minutes — then, as soon as one of the others started to stick to him a little too hard, he’d fake making a drive for the hoop and hand the Quaffle off to Meadowes or McKinnon instead, while Wilson or whomever was still moving the other way. Since Wilson, Stevens and Prewett were all trying to look good in front of Teak — instead of working together — they didn’t start playing proper coverage until the very end of the scrimmage, when they finally started to catch on.

It wasn’t the way James would have liked to fly, necessarily. Every instinct was screaming at him to make a dash for the goals, to show Teak that he was as gifted and brilliant as he bragged to his mates. And he certainly didn’t enjoy it when Trystan Stevens slammed into him so hard at the end of the match that he was clinging onto his broomstick with his left knee and three fingertips.

But from his precarious position, he could see Dorcas Meadowes holding the Quaffle he’d thrown her, grinning like a madwoman as she and McKinnon sailed off into the distance, the other players cursing as they soared after in pursuit.

And that was their plan in action. Get the Quaffle. Keep the Quaffle. And let Teak figure out everything else.

Teak’s whistle sounded loudly in James’s ear as he approached, helping him pull back up onto his Nimbus. “Alright, you lot, that’s time! Everybody on the ground!”

“Thanks,” James said, regaining his balance, but Teak was already descending. From this angle, James couldn’t read the expression on his face.

“How do you think we did?” McKinnon said as soon as he landed.

“I don’t know,” James said, keeping his voice down. “Good, I guess? I wish we’d scored more.”

“Me too,” Meadowes said. “But remember, we agreed that—”

“I know, I know,” James said. “Still…”

“Okay, everyone,” Teak said, clapping his hands together for attention. “I can see what appears to be a whole fleet of Hufflepuffs waiting on the edge of the pitch for their turn at tryouts — so I’m going to keep this short.”

James could feel every cell of his body shivering.

“You all did great up there,” Teak said. “Believe me, if we could field a team of six Chasers, you’d all have been done a half-hour ago. But I’ve only got two spots. And I’ve got to give them to the people who can complete this team best.

“Stevens, Prewett…”

James’s heart seemed to pop like a balloon.

“You’ve done wonderfully today. But it’s not going to work out.”

Wait.

Next to him, McKinnon gasped, and Meadowes grabbed his right arm tight.

“Potter and Meadowes — congratulations, mates.”

“Merlin’s mole,” James stammered. He could barely register Stevens and Prewett shuffling off in the distance, commiserating. He was too busy focusing on the two little Bludgers running interference in his stomach, and Meadowes’s grip growing tighter around his bicep. It seemed like she might be using him as a crutch to remain standing.

“And you too, McKinnon,” Teak continued. “I told you I’d bring on a reserve if I was impressed. I’m impressed.”

McKinnon burst into tears and laughter at the same time. It was such a shock that James started laughing too, and Meadowes right along with him. Before he knew it, the three of them were in a little huddle, laughing themselves silly.

“Alright, alright,” Teak said from above them. Even before he looked, James could hear the smile in his voice. “No more blubbering, you lot, or the Hufflepuffs back there’ll think you’re one of them.”

“Sorry, sorry,” McKinnon said. “I just— my dad’ll be so chuffed, y’know?”

“He should be,” Teak said. “The three of you made a nice team up there. Wilson, you’d better watch out for this one to throw your broomstick in the Whomping Willow.”

“Not likely,” Wilson said, coming over to stand by them. “I’ll be putting every security jinx I know on this before it goes in the broomshed tonight.”

“So what’s that, like two?” Meadowes said.

“Har har.” Wilson stuck out his hand, and Meadowes took it in an instant. “Didn’t doubt you’d be here for a minute, Dorcas.”

“Me either,” she replied. “Glad our Captain has a good head on his shoulders.”

“Agreed,” Wilson said. “And proper welcome to you too, Potter. Glad to have you on the full roster this year.”

James had spent the better part of the last year complaining to all his friends about how Wilson beat him out for the team — how he could fly circles around Wilson — how Wilson had about as many brain cells as the Bloody Baron. And yet, reaching out to shake Blake Wilson’s hand, he could only really see his former rival as one thing: His teammate.

“Glad to be flying next to you, mate,” he said.

The craziest bit was, he really meant it.


	6. Tell Me Why

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their third year might make James a Quidditch star, but it might also make his best friends social outcasts.

“Consider the etymology of _Wingardium Leviosa_.”

“Ugh, do we have to?”

Remus poked Sirius in the side to make him shut up, which he thought was terribly unfair. Professor Aelling had been droning on for 40 minutes now, and it was the longest Sirius had lasted in class this year without either speaking or snoring. Really, Remus should be happy that he hadn’t chosen snoring.

“This is one of the simplest spells taught to young witches and wizards,” Aelling said, picking up a piece of chalk and writing the incantation on the chalkboard behind them, “and yet not a single textbook I have found takes the time to really analyze the words themselves, not even those written hundreds of years ago, when this charm was invented.”

“Look, Remus, this is just boring,” Sirius whispered. “I’m not saying it’s not cool to know what spells mean, but I would rather learn how to cast new ones than—”

“Shh!” Peter was getting in on it now. He didn’t even seem to like Aelling the way Remus did, but Sirius was starting to suspect he was too used to kissing up to the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher to realize it wasn’t Professor Egg anymore.

“Many of you have probably noted the English word ‘wing,’ at the beginning of the phrase, especially since most users of the Levitation Charm begin practicing with feathers. Yet have you ever thought of the ‘ardium’?”

“I think of the ‘ardium’ every night, obviously.” James said. Remus sighed in defeat.

“In addition to using one of the common Latin endings we’ve discussed, this conjugation suggests something high or lofty — the definition of the Latin word ‘arduum.’ And then there is ‘leviosa’ — again, originating from the Latin verb ‘levo,’ meaning ‘to lift’. This is a spell that literally ‘lifts high on magic wings’, and yet we teach you about it as if these words are meaningless, unrelated to the effect of these spells.”

From the front of the room, Sirius saw Lily Evans raise her hand. “Professor Aelling, are you suggesting that spell incantations are just… directions, basically? We’re just telling the world around us what to do in a different language?”

“That’s a very insightful thought, Evans. Five points to Gryffindor.”

There went Lily, earning back the points they’d all lost five at a time.

“In a certain sense, yes,” Aelling continued, surveying the class. “But let’s take it a step further. Think on your first flying lesson, commanding a broom to rise with a single English command. Think on nonverbal spells, difficult to master but as powerful or more than any spell spoken aloud. We _know_ that this is all incantations are — and yet your educational system, and the whole wizarding world, choose to willfully ignore this fact, and treat magic like it is something static. Like you can learn a few hundred words and phrases, and you’ve plumbed the depths of magical knowledge.

“Every component of the phrase _Wingardium Leviosa_ is just a word — blended with other words and sounds to trigger just the right harmonic resonances, but a word nonetheless. What other words and sounds can blend with them? Is giving a stone statue feathers a matter of finding the right partner for the word “wing”? What can we lift, if we ‘levi’ or ‘levo’ some other syllable?”

“My eyelids back open, I hope,” Sirius said, a little too loudly. Professor Aelling’s eyes finally flashed to them in the back row, and Sirius quickly bent to jot meaningless scribbles into the margin of his textbook.

Sirius could feel their professor glaring them down, but all Aelling said aloud was: “For your homework tonight, return to your copy of Goshawk’s _Standard Book for Spells_ for Grade 1 — there are a few copies set aside in the library as well, should you not have it with you this term. Using what we’ve discussed today, along with the Latin grammar you’ve been studying, I’d like a colloquial definition for at least 15 different charms. _Not_ counting the Levitation Charm. Any questions?”

The bell rang before Aelling could be disappointed. Sirius wasn’t even the fastest to pack up his things and run for the door.

“I can’t _believe_ how dull this class is now,” James said, once they were all a safe distance away from Aelling’s domain. “Defense Against the Dark Arts was practically my favorite subject last year.”

“Aelling is not that bad,” Remus said. “Sure. I’m not particularly thrilled that we are focusing on theory more than practice—”

“ _Again_ …”

“—but when are we ever going to have the opportunity to learn about spell creation from a master of the craft?”

“Probably never,” Sirius said. “After all, the jinx is going to get Aelling like it’s gotten everyone else. Hopefully sooner rather than later.”

“At least we’ve escaped for another day,” James said. “Are you lot going up to the common room now? I have Quidditch practice after dinner, but—”

Oh. He’d forgotten.

“James,” Remus said, as Peter started to sulk again. “We told you this weekend. O’Brien’s got us coming back for detention again.”

It really wasn’t fair. On Friday, he, Remus and Peter had spent hours pulling books off the shelf, cross-checking against O’Brien’s arcane filing system, and then putting them all back. Then, at the end of their detention, O’Brien had taken one look at the shelves and told them that he didn’t like his such-and-such being so far from his this-and-that, and… Well, the long and short of it was that they had gotten a second round of detention for no good reason, except that perhaps O’Brien thought McGonagall was being too soft on them.

Like losing 100 points before term even began _and_ making them spend hours moving heavy textbooks around was soft.

“Damn, I’m sorry, guys. I totally forgot.”

“It’s fine,” Sirius said. “We started putting them back before we left on Friday — it shouldn’t take too long.”

“Then again,” Peter said, “O’Brien said he’s having the kitchen send our dinner to his offices. So…”

James hesitated, and then looked around to see if anyone was listening. “Do you want me to… I don’t know. Get my Invisibility Cloak and come with to help? Or cause a bunch of unseen mischief in O’Brien’s quarters for him to find when he goes to bed?”

Sirius and Remus shared a look. They’d already talked about this on the way back to the common room on Friday — and decided it was a terrible idea.

“You’ve got practice,” Remus said. “No point in you missing that. Plus we might get blamed for it, even if O’Brien’s watching us the whole time — the teaching staff doesn’t know about your cloak, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be their first suspect if anything happens while we’re there.”

“Alright. Let me know how it goes, at least?” James asked. “Hopefully it takes less time than you think.”

It didn’t.

Maybe it was the fact that they were tired from doing it the first time a few nights before, or maybe it was the stupefying aftermath of Aelling’s lecture, but it took the three of them an hour longer to re-sort all of O’Brien’s books — dinner not included. By the time they shuffled down the Charms corridor together, Sirius’s wristwatch said it was near curfew already.

“We should just go back upstairs,” Peter protested. “I think I have some candy tucked away…”

“Not a chance,” Sirius said. “We deserve a proper meal after that nonsense O’Brien had out for us. One tiny sandwich each and a fruit basket? We should have thrown it and him out the window.”

“Believe me, Peter,” Remus said, “I would be on your side if it wasn’t for my trip to the Shrieking Shack last night… I could eat a whole leg of lamb and ask for seconds.”

Sirius shuddered. “Reminder, mate: Describing all the meat you would eat the night before or after a full moon is sort of on the edge of acceptable.”

“Sorry,” Remus said. “It’s been a long day. I shouldn’t have tried to make it to Divination… Hey, nobody noticed I was missing during Astronomy, right?”

“Nah,” Peter said. “Sargas kept us pretty busy charting Mars’s path over the summer months in our star maps. Did you want to look at mine when—”

“Oh, bloody toad spawn.”

Sirius’s curse was directed at the three figures who’d stopped on the stairwell ahead of them to sneer in their general direction. It was his brother Regulus and his friends, Fred Wilkes and Alecto Carrow, both of whom looked positively delighted to see them.

“What, O’Brien let you out already?” Wilkes said, overdramatically pulling back his sleeve to look at his wristwatch. “It’s only 9:45! I imagined the old man would just keep you there until tomorrow.”

They knew everything, Sirius realized. Not just about the house points — Regulus had gotten that information somehow, since he’d shared it with their mother over the summer, so it wasn’t a surprise that he’d told his friends.

But someone had told them the rest of it. Not just that they had detention on Friday, but that they’d been assigned a second night.

A very painful memory of telling Barry Stebbins both of those things flashed through Sirius’s mind.

“Leave it be, Fred.” Regulus looked and sounded irritated by the very fact that Sirius was in their presence. The feeling was mutual. “We don’t keep walking, we’ll be out past curfew.”

“We’ll be fine,” Wilkes said, waving his hand dismissively. “Malva Bulstrode is on duty tonight; she’s one of us. And so is, uh… Alecto, who’s partnered with Malva tonight again?”

“Slughorn’s nephew, the Ravenclaw. He won’t do a thing.”

“See?” Wilkes said, sneering back at the three of them. “It’s nice to have friends in high places. Or at least be smarter about wandering around after dark than you three.”

“How’d you even know we had detention?” Peter asked. Sirius could have hit him with a Silencing Charm on the spot, and maybe a Full-Body Bind for good measure. If they had been bluffing before, they wouldn’t need to anymore.

Regulus and his friends only laughed. “Come on, Pettigrew,” Carrow said. “Just because gossip hasn’t reached Gryffindor House yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

“It just means no Slytherin’s decided it’s in their best interest to share that information yet,” Wilkes added.

“O’Brien’s told all his upper-level classes this week not to bother reshelving books, since he had students coming in for detention to reorganize his library,” Regulus said, “and no one could have had detention this early except the students who lost all those points for Gryffindor.”

“And look what we have here,” Carrow said. “Three Gryffindor students, coming down from the Charms corridor, late at night. You see, boys, it’s not so difficult if you use one or two of those brain cells you allegedly have.”

Sirius felt a rush of relief. Barry hadn’t told them. He couldn’t figure out why the Ravenclaw third-year would have shared that information with some second-year Slytherins — especially the only one related to him — but he was still relieved nonetheless.

Of course, that relief didn’t squash his over-boiling fury. “You rotten little twits are _really_ picking the wrong night to show off,” he growled, looking from one to the other. “Why don’t you go on back to the dungeons where you belong, so we don’t have to—”

“Sirius, come on,” Remus said, stepping closer and putting a hand on his wand arm. “We don’t need to threaten them.”

“Don’t worry,” Regulus said, smiling. “I don’t think any of us are feeling threatened at all.”

“Remus,” Sirius hissed, “we can’t just walk away. They know everything.”

“So? Like they said, they haven’t told anyone yet.”

“What, so you want us to just go about our lives waiting for the day my kid brother and his arrogant little friends decide to share with the rest of the school that the three of us are the reason Gryffindor’s starting the year down 100 points?”

“Merlin’s ghost!”

Sirius’s head snapped to the right. Right there, a few feet away, were Mina Dawlish and Helena Quickley, staring at the group of them slack-jawed.

And Sirius realized they’d heard everything he’d just said.

“Helena, Mina…” Remus started.

“Okay, this is insane,” Mina said, putting her hands up and stepping back. “Imogen told us that Mary told her that the Gryffindor prefect girls thought it was Patricia Rakepick.”

“I told you, Alice Prewett just thinks Rakepick is trying to steal her boyfriend, so she thinks the worst of her in EVERYTHING,” Helena said.

Regulus and his friends started laughing, clearly tickled by the situation. Sirius ignored them. Maybe, just maybe, he could trick Mina and Helena into forgetting what he had just said.

“Hey,” Sirius said, “I, uh, was just kidding, you know? Obviously we’re not the ones who lost Gryffindor all those points. Regulus was just, uh—”

Mina’s attention shifted away from Helena immediately, and she scowled at Sirius. “Can it, Black. Your brother’s clearly scum, but so are you. And your friends, apparently.”

“Hey—”

“You’ve been lying to our whole house for more than a week!” Mina shouted. “And apparently just thought we were too stupid to figure it out!”

Admittedly, until Sirius had opened his stupid mouth, he _had_ assumed Mina and Helena, if no one else, were too stupid to figure it out. But he couldn’t see how mentioning that would help now.

“Listen—”

“Nope,” Helena said, turning her nose up at them. “The begging and pleading is boring. Come on, Mina, let’s go share the news, shall we? We haven’t had any good gossip to share in AGES.”

The three of them tried to get the girls to stay, voices clamoring over each other, but Mina and Helena pretended not to hear them, stalking away down the hall. When they were gone, Sirius realized Regulus, Fred, and Alecto had slunk away too.

It was just his friends left with him now. Peter was leaning against a wall, collapsing in on himself. Remus just stood there, in the middle of the hallway, looking off in the direction the girls had gone.

“Well,” Sirius said gloomily, “think we can bring enough snacks from the kitchen up to the common room to keep this from ruining our lives?”

——

It had been two weeks, and James was still the only person in their house who was properly talking to his friends.

“This is ridiculous,” James finally exploded, after Remus told him for the 18th time to stop glaring down the Great Hall table at the rest of their house. “Why shouldn’t I be upset with these lousy excuses for Gryffindors? Like none of them have ever lost house points before.”

“They haven’t lost 100 points in one go before,” Sirius muttered.

“That is most certainly not true.”

“Or at least not before term even starts,” Remus clarified. “That’s different. It’s demoralizing.”

“Okay, so it’s ‘demoralizing.’ Get over it.”

“Easy for you to say,” Peter said, scarcely looking up from his plate. “You’re not the one everyone’s upset with. You’re just guilty by association.”

James sighed. He’d been so excited at the beginning of term. Peter was safely in Britain instead of being an international fugitive, he’d properly made the Quidditch team, and girls finally knew him for something other than as the “wait, didn’t I read somewhere that your family invented Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion” guy.

But then the castle’s biggest blabbermouths had both heard Sirius and the others talking about their detention to Regulus. It hadn’t even been 24 hours before most of the castle knew, and anyone out of the loop had caught up by Monday morning. No one had properly confronted the four of them about it (well, okay, Wilson had whined about it a little at practice until Teak threw a Quaffle at his head and sent the lot of them off to run drills), but that was almost worse. James could have stood up for his friends in a fight. If you shouted at people giving you the silent treatment, you just looked like a crazy person.

“Look,” Remus said. “We get it, James. It sucks that everyone is mad at us, and that nobody wants to sit with us at meals, or partner with us in class, or hang out with us on weekends. But it’s not going to be forever.”

“That’s what I said about my mother hating me,” Sirius grumbled. “But I have been very disappointed so far.”

“I think Gryffindor House is less vindictive than your mother,” Remus said, giving Sirius a look of irritation. “And either way, that’s not really my point.”

“What is your point?” James asked. “What, I’m just supposed to sit here and wait until people stop treating us like social outcasts?”

“No,” Remus said. “You’re not. That’s what I’m trying to say, James.”

“I’m confused,” James said. “You _don’t_ want me to sit here with you?”

“Well… That’s not _exactly_ what I’m saying, but—”

“You’re driving us mad!” Peter squeaked, slamming his fork down onto his plate with a clatter. “None of us asked you for this!”

“For what?” James shouted back. People were starting to look at them, he realized, but it’s not like their social status could drop any lower.

“For you to pretend this all happened to you too! It didn’t, James. _We_ got caught. _We_ got detention. _You’ve_ got your spot on the Quidditch team and a bunch of brand-new friends and maybe you should go sit with them instead!”

And then, before James could even properly scoff at Peter’s newfound backbone, the smaller boy was getting up from the table and storming off.

“Jesus,” Remus breathed, putting his head in his hands. “So, obviously, that was not what I was trying to say.”

“Was it?” James hissed. “Or was it what you were trying not to say?”

“My head hurts,” Sirius said. “First Peter starts acting like a proper Gryffindor, and now you two are playing word games with each other…”

“Shut up, Sirius,” James and Remus snapped simultaneously.

“Whatever,” Sirius said. “Do you want me to go after him so you two can keep bickering, or…”

“Lord, no.” Remus finished his last lemon cake and got up himself. “God only knows what you would think might make Peter feel better. You’d probably drive him down to the kitchens, begging the house-elves for some Firewhiskey.”

“That’s not the worst idea…”

“I’m already going,” Remus said. “Why don’t you try explaining this to James? I don’t speak jock.”

“And I do?

Remus was already walking away, though, which was great — James only had the energy and time to be annoyed with one of his friends at a time.

“Really, Sirius, what is—”

“Look.” Sirius looked him dead in the eyes, and James could see him shake off all the sulkiness he’d been emoting before. “The three of us all think you’re great, James, but we could use a break from the righteous anger act, y’know?”

“It’s not an act, it’s—”

“Whatever it is,” he interrupted, raising his hands. “We appreciate it. Really. But it just makes us feel worse, mate. I’m already infamous enough… and I don’t think Remus and Peter are used to getting this kind of attention at school. It’d be nice to have a little bit of anonymity for a while. ”

“Oh.” James hadn’t thought of that, he supposed. “I just… It’s not fair, Sirius. It’s just house points. Who cares who wins the Cup at the end of the year?”

Sirius smirked. “I’ll remember you said that at the end of the Quidditch season, James. Suspect you’ll be singing a different tune by then.”

He might have had a point there.

“And speaking of which,” Sirius continued, “Peter is right about one thing: You do have something new and exciting to focus on. You’re allowed to do that. I mean…” His voice dropped conspiratorially. “You lot are my favorite people in the world or whatever, but the four of us don’t have to be attached at the hip.”

“But—”

“Look, just try it, okay?” Sirius said. “If the three of us are crying ourselves to sleep, I promise we’ll say something. But just give us a little breathing room, and don’t keep banging the drum about how unfairly treated we are, okay? Frankly, if you lot win your match next month, the rest of the house will have something new to talk about and might give us a break.”

He couldn’t really argue with that logic.

So James threw himself into Quidditch. He was the first one on the pitch and last one off of it every time Teak scheduled a practice, and he was even squeezing in extra time wherever and whenever he could fit it into his schedule. As long as the skies were clear, he was there, getting better acquainted with his new Nimbus 1313 and testing his reflexes with all kinds of stunts.

Then, on a bright Tuesday morning a week and a half into his new routine, he came down the steps of the boys’ dormitory to find Dorcas Meadowes waiting in a chair by the foot of the stairs, goggles already pushing back her dark hair.

“Took you long enough,” she said as he approached. “I was beginning to think you weren’t actually as committed to this as it looked.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Are you waiting for me?”

“Obviously,” she replied, looking at him like he was an idiot. “You don’t think you’re the only one on the team who wants to beat Slytherin next month, do you? C’mon, I nicked us extra apples from dinner last night so we don’t have to come back for breakfast.”

James had somewhat been looking forward to breakfast — the house-elves had done something different to the bangers of late, and they were the highlight of his morning — but it would be sort of nice to practice straight through. And it would be better still to have someone to practice with. There was only so much he could do alone, and doing barrel rolls until he got dizzy was starting to get a little boring.

“Alright,” he said, leading the way toward the portrait hole. “You make a good point, Meadowes. I like the sound of—”

“Dorcas,” she said, suddenly beside him and suddenly earnest. “Not Meadowes. Please. I really, really prefer it.”

“Seriously?” James said. “You prefer the name _Dorcas_ over your surname?”

Something dangerous shifted in Dorcas’s expression.

“My Aunt Dorcas,” she said, “died a hero’s death in one of the last battles against the dark wizard Grindelwald. My father has been living with his other family in London since I was three. Perhaps you can guess why I prefer one namesake over the other.”

Yikes.

The whole “dead Aunt Dorcas” thing put a bit of a damper on their conversation as they made their way through the castle, but Dorcas had warmed back up by the time they had walked through the cold, dewy grass to the broomshed. “So, Potter… what got you up on a broomstick for the first time?”

A quip about Dorcas using his surname when he wasn’t allowed to use hers quickly sprang to mind, but James choked it back just in time.

“I don’t really remember,” he admitted. “We never had a broom in the house until I was already pretty decent at flying, for a kid. I mostly just borrowed broomsticks from my parents’ friends when we would go visit for fancy dinner parties or socials or whatever. You know how it is; there’s always a point two or three cocktails in when the grownups finally get tired of their five-year-olds tugging on their dress robes, asking questions.”

“Sad to say I don’t,” Dorcas said. “Mum didn’t get invited to lots of parties.”

James might as well have poked his wand in his eye, for all the success he was having in conversation this morning.

“I don’t really remember myself either,” Dorcas continued, handing James his Nimbus 1313 and reaching for a Quaffle. “My mum played in school, though, so brooms were always her favorite way to travel. Apparently she flew cross-country to Brighton three months after I was born to visit my gran, me strapped to her back all the way.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, it’s a good story. And less embarrassing than the time she took me to the Quidditch World Cup and I told everyone we met that Royston Idlewind was going to marry me.”

James tried not to snort with laughter and failed.

“The guy runs the World Cup now, so at least I have good taste,” Dorcas said.

“Sure,” James said. “And his mustache curls in four different directions, so he’s also a real trendsetter.”

“Oh, go off.”

“So if you’re Royston Idlewind’s lady-in-waiting, how come you didn’t make it on the team before now?” James asked as they walked out of the shed. “I don’t even remember you at tryouts last year.”

Dorcas grimaced. “Well… I was supposed to be there. Gideon had been haranguing me about it all summer, because his brother caught me flying around the castle after hours and was so impressed he didn’t even take away any house points. But then… Do you remember Professor Lexington?”

“Ugh,” James said. “Tragically yes. What a little rat.”

“That’s exactly what I called him,” Dorcas said, eyes devilishly bright. “So then I had detention literally until he scampered out of the school with his tail between his legs.”

James’ jaw dropped. “You didn’t.”

Dorcus nodded solemnly. “It was the first week of classes, and we were all asking about what spells we were going to learn this year, since all we got after Brocken left was theory and a handful of useless little protective charms, and then over the summer there were all those anti-Muggle attacks. We wanted real defensive magic, and jinxes that did more than give each other the sniffles. And he told us straight-out that the only thing that would do us a lick of good if a Death Eater crossed our paths was if we could run away faster than they could kill us.”

That sounded like Lexington. “So you called him a rat.”

“I certainly did,” Dorcas said, locking the broomshed behind them. “So, you see, your friends aren’t the only Gryffindors who’ve ever had detentions this early.”

James’s stomach plummeted. Sirius, Remus, and Peter had been the furthest thing from his mind this morning, and there was that sense of guilt all over again.

“It wasn’t even that big a deal,” he started, “McGonagall just got pissed because—”

“Hey,” Dorcas said, “you don’t have to defend your friends to me, James. Believe me, there are more important things in the world than house points.”

And then she smiled, looking to the sky above them. “Enough chatter. Let’s get in the air.”

Dorcas’s smile felt like a good thing. A very good thing.

And neither it nor the extra practice was a one-time fluke. James wasn’t really sure how he’d pulled it off, but within a week it was clear that his extra practices had become _their_ extra practices.

They had both promised not to make a big deal out of always going together, since their class schedules didn’t overlap perfectly. And yet James could never again find the motivation to head down to the pitch during his free period on Wednesday mornings, when Dorcas had Muggle Studies. And he never saw her walking past the greenhouses during Herbology on Thursday, even though he know he knew she had the whole afternoon free.

It wasn’t anything private or secret or whatever. Blake Wilson even joined them, a handful of times, which James found nicer than he expected. Wilson was still an arrogant motormouth who wasn’t as smart as he thought he was on the ground — but up in the air, James and Dorcas flying beside him, it was hard to deny he was good at this.

Not better than James, of course. If you took into account that Wilson had gotten to play all last season. And that he was a year older, which was unfair since James was at least as mature as he was. If not more.

They hadn’t mentioned their extra practices to the rest of the team, but on a Saturday afternoon a few weeks later, while they were scrimmaging through a light rain that had scared off the Hufflepuff team, James finally managed to steal the ball from Dorcas for the first time and was startled by an approving whistle from below.

James and the others stopped in their tracks, looking down to see two figures watching from the stands, a large, hunter-green umbrella floating over their heads. One of them was Teak, already wearing his uniform for their own practice an hour later in the day. The other was Professor McGonagall, studying them like a scout for the national team.

“I told you,” Teak said, his voice carrying despite the rainfall. “The three of them are dynamite. I haven’t seen a group of Chasers this good since my first year on the team, when Prewett and Hayes were with that guy who’s captaining the Appleby Arrows now.”

“Eric Cappleman,” McGonagall said. “I remember. I also remember we took the Cup that year.”

“We’ll do our best, Professor!” James shouted with unexpected bravado. The effect was somewhat ruined by him actually dropping the Quaffle, then cursing as he spun into a sharp dive to try and catch it.

“All right,” Kris shouted, at full volume now. “Come down and rest for a bit. We’re both very impressed, but I also don’t want you so tired you fall off your broomsticks during our actual practice, you hear?”

James looked up at Dorcas and realized she was already smiling at him, ear to ear. That same bright smile he’d seen on that Tuesday morning before.

He had no idea how they’d gotten to this point, two friendly teammates flying side-by-side in the rain. But he liked it. He liked it a whole lot.

——

Professor McGonagall touched her wand to her throat a moment, and when she spoke, her voice had become so loud and resonant that Remus thought his teeth would chatter out of his skull. “All students, please line up single-file! We’ll be checking your permission slips in a moment, and then heading down to the village together.”

He, James and Sirius didn’t hesitate. The three of them had been looking forward to their first Hogsmeade trip for weeks, and considering the thin ice they were already on with McGonagall this year, they weren’t doing anything to jeopardize it.

“Are you sure Peter doesn’t want to come?” James asked in a whisper, trying not to draw McGonagall’s attention their way as she examined one piece of parchment after another.

“I asked him three times yesterday and again this morning,” Remus said. “And two of those four times, he said no by turning gray and running for the nearest toilet.”

Peter had been battling some sort of stomach bug all week, which had put quite a damper on the birthday celebrations Remus and the others had tried to throw him a few days ago. None of them had been able to eat the rest of their cake after hearing the noise Peter was making as he puked out the window.

“Surprised you’re coming with, James,” Sirius said. “Don’t you have Quidditch practice Saturdays?”

“Teak agreed to shorten practice, so I’ve just got to go when we get back,” James replied. “He was very sore about it though. Probably going to work us all the harder when we get back to the pitch.”

“Oh, you love it,” Remus said. He hadn’t seen James this happy about anything in ages. Maybe ever. Remus couldn’t much understand the appeal of Quidditch himself, but it wasn’t like he could judge. While he was recovering from another full moon yesterday morning, he’d reread last year’s Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook. For fun.

They were up to McGonagall now, extending their permission slips one by one. Remus watched her skim the signatures: Fleamont Potter, Hope Lupin, Walburga Black.

McGonagall lingered a moment over that last one, but handed it back without a word and moved on to a group of fifth-years behind them.

“Sirius,” Remus asked, as soon as they were on their way down to the village, out of any adult’s hearing, “how the bloody hell did you get your mother to sign your Hogsmeade permission slip?”

“I didn’t,” Sirius replied, smiling deviously. “But Professor McGonagall doesn’t need to know who really signed her name.”

Remus burst out laughing, and didn’t stop until they were practically to the Three Broomsticks.

“I wanna buy first round,” Sirius said, as soon as they walked in. “I made sure to nick some money from Orion’s coinpurse this summer just for this occasion.”

“Sure,” Remus said. He didn’t particularly care one way or another. They had all afternoon; he imagined they’d all buy a round at least once. Maybe twice. “James and I’ll find a table.”

“Wicked.” Sirius broke away from them quickly, rushing over to an empty space at the bar.

“There’s three over there,” James said. “Come on, before someone else gets it.”

“Thought this place would be busier.” There were a couple grizzled wizards at the bar who looked like they might be rooted to their stools, and a couple sixth- and seventh-years who’d come in ahead of them, but that was it. “Probably just too early,” he continued. “Everyone’s still eating lunch.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” James said, looking in the direction of the kitchen. “You think they’ve got a menu around here somewhere?”

“Guess you’ll have to ask.” As they sat down at their table, Remus looked guiltily at the space where they might have pulled up a fourth chair for Peter.

“Stop that,” James said. “I recognize that face. That’s the ‘Remus feels bad about something he shouldn’t feel bad about’ face.”

“I do not have a face for that.” He was lying, of course. Remus knew perfectly well what face that was. He’d seen it himself in mirrors, usually the day after a full moon.

“Look, Peter is sick,” James said. “He can’t keep a damn thing down. And it’s not like we told him he wasn’t allowed to come with us. I mean… he certainly wasn’t, since he’d just be sick the whole time. But we _tell_ him we didn’t want him to come, and I think that’s important.”

“It’s not just that he’s sick.” Okay, it was a little bit that he was sick. But also… “There’s something else. He’s been off for weeks, James. You can’t tell me you haven’t—”

Remus was cut off by the sudden appearance of a statuesque woman in his periphery, approaching their table with a drink in her hand.

“This is your table, dear?” The woman turned to look behind her, and Remus realized Sirius was there too, holding two pints of his own.

“She didn’t think I could carry all three,” Sirius said, handing Remus his drink and sitting down. He seemed to be sulking a bit, as if he didn’t notice that he’d somehow convinced the Broomsticks’ gorgeous barmaid to abandon her post and bring them their Butterbeers in person.

“I just didn’t want you to spill, love,” the barmaid said, flashing James and Remus both a subtle grin. “Besides, I like getting to know the new crop of third years. Though usually they don’t make it in here until they’ve stuffed their pockets full at Honeydukes. You’re early.”

“That’s because we’re gentlemen of refined taste, obviously,” James said. He seemed to be trying to do something coy with his eyelashes. Remus looked away quickly to avoid snorting into the Butterbeer their server had just handed to him.

She laughed, the sound seeming to come from deep in her throat. “That’s a new one,” she said. “I like it. What was your name, dear?”

Their friend seemed to puff up a bit, even as a blush spread across his face.. “James. James Potter. This is Remus. And you met Sirius.”

“That I did.” She handed James his tankard, then did a tiny little bow. “Name’s Rosmerta. Looking forward to making your acquaintance, boys.”

“Yes, that,” Remus said. He could have kicked himself. “Uh, that’s, uh, sounds nice.”

Rosmerta gave them a little wave goodbye, then stepped to the side, shifting easily into conversation with the seventh-years at the table behind them.

“Wow,” James said. “Remus, I have never, ever seen you tongue-tied over a girl. This is a monumental occasion.”

“Stop it!” Remus hissed. He could feel his ears burning. “Stop trying to change the subject. Sirius, don’t you think something is wrong with Peter?”

“I mean, obviously,” he said. “But I don’t talk about people’s bodily functions while enjoying Butterbeer, Remus. Or, actually, while enjoying anything.”

“That is not what I am talking about!” Remus took a big slug of Butterbeer, trying to corral his thoughts. “Seriously, guys. You can’t tell me you think everything is okay with Peter. Something’s the matter with him.”

James and Sirius shared a look.

“Remus,” James finally said. “Look, you’re not wrong about Peter, but…”

“His dad is on the run, Remus,” Sirius interrupted. “Peter almost went on the run with him. Now his mum is back from France with the man she left his father for, and the two of them are living in the old family house while we’re here at school. Tell me you would not be acting weird.”

“But he seemed fine at first.” Okay, that wasn’t 100 percent true. “Or at least mostly fine. It just seems like things have been getting worse as the year goes on.”

“How so?” James asked. “And what could possibly be causing that?”

“That’s what I don’t know,” Remus said. “I’ve been trying to figure it out. There haven’t been any new developments in his dad’s case in weeks. Hogwarts gossip has mostly moved past our huge loss of house points. But he’s still been keeping to himself. Remember that Sunday two weeks back, when he was gone before breakfast and we didn’t see him again until dinner?”

“That was also the week Professor Matthews assigned us that big essay on Muggle games,” Sirius said. “I sort of assumed he was in the library or something.”

“But what if he wasn’t? What if something else was going on?”

“Like what?” James crossed his arms. “Remus, if something else was going on, I would want to help him. You know that. But we don’t have any evidence there’s _anything_ happening with Peter. And we’ve asked him how he’s doing.”

Had they? The way Remus remembered it, the three of them had mostly just been trying to avoid the whole Arthur Pettigrew situation, and keep everyone else in the school from bringing it up around Peter. Remus was starting to fear that wasn’t enough.

“Look,” James continued, “I feel bad for Peter. But I would like to take one afternoon to deliberately not feel bad about Peter.”

“Hear, hear!” Sirius shouted.

“I want us to have a few rounds of Butterbeers, and then go out and explore Hogsmeade, and then we can dip into Honeydukes and buy Peter so many sweets he’d be sick even if he didn’t have the stomach flu. Deal?”

Maybe James was right. Maybe Remus was being a worrywart.

“Sure,” Remus said, lifting his pint. “Sounds like a plan.”

But even after they finished their first, second, fifth Butterbeers, there was still a bitter taste at the back of Remus’s mouth.

——

It was a beautiful day for Quidditch. Unseasonably warm for November, with a few white, curly clouds in the sky and not a bit of breeze to chill them when they were in the air.

James would probably be more appreciative of it all if he weren’t desperately trying not to be sick again.

He thanked Merlin that he’d managed to get all the way into a stall before regurgitating his entire breakfast, though he desperately wished he knew how to cast a Silencing Charm. He was sure no one had heard him though. When he had felt the wave of nausea overtake him in the changing room, his teammates had all been in an excited clamor, shouting back and forth about what they were going to do to Slytherin’s team.

Somehow it was that crescendo of noise that finally set off the clammy feeling he’d had in his gut all day. He’d been able to fake it in the morning, able to pretend there was nothing special about today except that it was Sirius’s birthday, and that later tonight they were going to celebrate and open presents and maybe even nick some sweets from the kitchen. No thoughts about what had to happen between now and then. No admitting that the really big thing happening in the life of James Fleamont Potter today had nothing to do with his best friend’s birthday.

But the sound of his teammates’ voices, echoing in the changing room, made it all terribly real. He was really on the Quidditch team. He was really going to go out there on the pitch in front of the entire school. And everyone was going to see whether he was really deserving of his spot on the team or not.

Wiping sick off his lips, James was starting to feel like the answer was “or not.”

“Feeling any better?”

James whipped around to see the last person he wanted to standing over him: Dorcas.

“Y-you can’t be in here,” he stammered. “This is the boy’s loo.”

Dorcas crouched down beside him. “Don’t worry. Nobody noticed you duck out. They’re all too busy arguing about which player Teak and Flume should try to knock off their broomsticks with a Bludger first.”

“Well it’s Vance, obviously,” James said, trying to act normal. “She’s the Captain. Cut off the head, snake just twitches creepily until it dies.”

“James.” Dorcas had a sympathetic look in her eye. “It’s okay to be scared.”

“I’m not scared!”

“Well, that makes one of us.”

James had to take a beat to fully process that. “You… you don’t look scared.”

In answer, Dorcas stretched a hand out in front of her. It was twitching back-and-forth, faster than a Snitch.

“You probably didn’t see me at breakfast this morning since I couldn’t even imagine eating,” she said. “I got up early because I couldn’t sleep, then I spent an hour in the shower because I knew as soon as I came out I would have to get ready for this.”

“What are you scared of?” James asked. “You’re a phenomenal player. You look great on your broomstick. And you’ve usually got more confidence than you should know what to do with.”

Dorcas grinned. “I could say the same for you, James.”

Fair point.

“Look, this _is_ scary,” she continued. “But we’re not alone. For one thing, I know every other person on this team has gone through what we’re going through. Last year, before Wilson’s first match, his buddy Denis had to search the whole castle to try and find him. He ended up tracking him down in some dark corner of the library.”

“Really?” In retrospect, James did remember Wilson was the last player to arrive that day. But he hadn’t noticed anything amiss when he came in. He just joined the huddle, and then the whole team ran onto the pitch and sent him back up to the stands to watch.

“You know what he said afterwards? As soon as he got on that broomstick, it was fine. Because even though he was terrified of screwing up — the game was just too fast. He couldn’t worry anymore because he didn’t have time to. And that’s the same thing that’s gonna happen to you and me.”

“Promise?” he asked.

“I promise,” she replied. “Now come on. We’ve got to get on those broomsticks.”

James let her help him to his feet, and then they came out to find Teak just starting in on strategy talk. He half-listened as Teak talked about the opposing team, plays to run, mistakes to avoid from last year. And then they were all moving out onto the field, broomsticks in hand, and James found himself in the middle of it all, pushed out almost against his will.

Beside him, he could feel Dorcas’s shaky hand, clutched tightly to his own.

A wave of sound hit them as they came out of the tunnel and into the light. James looked up to see the stands glimmering with bright banners in blocks of red and green on every side. He scanned the stands, immediately sensing the futility of the gesture. He knew Remus and Sirius and Peter were up there, but he couldn’t make out a single soul in the melee, not even the seven first-years who’d accidentally dyed their hair bright blue in a potions accident last week.

“This is the Gryffindor team!” shouted a voice that sounded as nervous as James was. It seemed to be coming from any and everywhere all at once, but as James turned his head back and forth searching for its source, Wilson elbowed him and pointed up to the center of the stands, where a plump blond boy was sitting alone at a small table, with a strange metal contraption in front of his mouth and Professor Sprout hovering by his shoulder. “They’re…here…”

“Let’s show ‘em who we are, mates!” Teak shouted. He hopped on his broom in a single fluid motion, and then he was off. All around James, his teammates followed suit, so it would have been silly for him not to do the same. He pulled his goggles down, tightened his fingers around the wood of his Nimbus, swung a leg over, and then—

Dorcas was right. As soon as he was in the air, wind whistling past his ears, it was like he was born to do this.

He looked over at her, and she was smiling bigger than he’d ever seen. Laughing, even, and then she pulled up into a vertical loop, twirling as the crowd cheered. James looked over at Wilson, who winked and then gave him the signal for a complicated twist pattern Teak had been grilling them on all week. He nodded, and the two of them darted down a bit, weaving their flight paths back and forth before rising up to stabilize on either side of Dorcas.

“Wow!” the commentator shouted. “Look at them go! Boy, I wish I could do that on a broomstick. I wonder if that sort of thing makes them dizzy. I remember—”

Professor Sprout’s voice started to bleed into the audio. “Glenn, dear, maybe it would be good to say who’s on the team.”

“Oh, right! I have that right here. Oh no, I think I spilled my pumpkin juice on it. The Gryffindor Captain is Kristopher Peak. Or wait. Maybe it’s Elizabeth Treat…”

From higher up, James could finally see into the stands, sort of. There — that was where his friends were sitting! He recognized the big banner they’d been making last night, a lion wearing Quidditch goggles that looked just like his. He buzzed past them, raising his arm high, and smiled as he heard their cheers.

“Now the Slytherins are coming in! Their Captain, Emmeline Vance, is very scary. As soon as she found out I was the new Quidditch commentator, she cornered me in the hallway on the way to Charms and made me pronounce her name a whole bunch of times in a row so she knew I would do it right today. That’s ‘Emmeline Vance.’ See, I told you I could do it.”

James glanced over toward the commentator booth to see Pomona Sprout taking her seat next to Glenn, sadly shaking her head before taking a long pull of something in a flask.

A loud whistle blared from below, and James looked down to see Madam Hooch looking particularly grumpy, standing in front of their assembled opponents. “Stop showboating, you lot,” she shouted, “or I’ll charge you all with fouls and just hand the Quaffle straight to the Slytherin team.”

James and the others were down on the ground and off their broomsticks in a moment, Teak looking significantly less chastised than the rest of them as he led the way to the center of the pitch. “Sorry, Ro,” he said, winking at their referee. “First game as captain and all. Got a little over-excited.”

Madam Hooch’s face didn’t move. “That’d be a more believable excuse if your two immediate predecessors hadn’t both used it on their first games, Teak. Captains, shake hands.”

Ahead of them, Emmeline Vance looked very unamused, though whether the short brunette was more irritated with their flying about or Glenn Toffee’s commentary was anyone’s guess. Immediately behind her stood her two fellow Chasers: Cole Shafiq, one of the Slytherins from his year, and some second-year named Haywood who was built like a classic Greek statue. Both were new additions to the roster; Teak had grilled James and the lot of them endlessly for any tips on how to handle them, but all he had been able to offer was that Shafiq wasn’t particularly great at Potions. They were a blank slate, ready for James and the others to test themselves against.

All they needed to wait for was the sound of…

Hooch’s whistle blew, and James took off even faster than he had a few minutes before, straight up in the air, arm stretched forward to catch the Quaffle. Somehow he’d managed to be ahead of everyone, and the fingers of his right hand brushed the side of the ball just enough for him to pull it in closer—

And then he thought of Wilson during tryouts, taking the Quaffle right out of that second-year’s hands, and he shoved the Quaffle down and away with his fingers.

Sure enough, a moment later, a blur in the shape of Emmeline Vance streaked past, scowling. James looked down to see Wilson was already there, catching the Quaffle and soaring toward the goalposts. The Slytherin Keeper was so surprised, Wilson didn’t even need to hand the Quaffle off to Dorcas, guarding his flank — he just popped it through the right goalpost, the ball never closer than four or five yards from the opposing Keeper.

10-0, James thought, as the crowd went wild. It’s a start.

Of course, the Slytherin team didn’t prove themselves as easy to outwit again. In that initial moment, it was clear Vance had been cocky, undervaluing their skill and assuming they’d just be able to fly better and faster than him and the others. But it was also clear that she wasn’t a person who made the same mistake twice.

The next half-hour was a blur. He and the others went up and down the field, one play after another, with both their Keeper, Martha Church, and the Slytherin Keeper managing to deflect all but a handful of shots on the goalposts. After a few sprints like this, James found it hard to focus on anything but the current play; the only way he knew the score was from Glenn Toffee’s increasingly impressed exclamations.

“Wow! The Gryffindor Keeper’s blocked another one! Slytherin is trying their best, but the score remains 30 to 20, Gryffindor favor. Being a Chaser looks very hard!”

James could practically see the fury coming off Vance like steam. As Shafiq and Wilson both dove down to try and collect the falling Quaffle, he saw her make a strange gesture with her hand at her side. He couldn’t tell who it was directed toward though — Hayward and the Slytherin Beaters both seemed to move at the same time, flying a new pattern.

“Thank bloody Merlin for Martha,” Dorcas said, hovering beside him a moment.

“Their Keeper’s almost as good,” James said, eyes trying to follow Hayward instead of looking at Dorcas. “I don’t think we can count on scoring too many more points.”

“Langley better catch that Snitch then. And fast.”

Below them Shafiq caught the Quaffle, and Dorcas and James both darted into motion to pursue him. Their opponent tried to pass to Hayward, but Dorcas was already swooping in from above, bumping his elbow just so and knocking the Quaffle from his grasp.

James had it before any of the Slytherins could recover. Flying in a zig-zag, he kept low to the ground, looking over his shoulder at the Slytherins and his fellow Gryffindors chasing behind.

There was a time for teamwork, and this wasn’t it. If he tried to pass it to Dorcas or Wilson, the Slytherins would snatch it effortlessly. So he kept going, closer and closer to the goalposts and lower and lower to the ground — so near he had to resist the temptation to stroke the grass below.

In the distance above, he could see Slytherin’s Keeper eying him. James could see his expression shifting every time he looked up — he was anticipating the moment when James was going to snap straight up and try to score, and it kept not coming.

Hundreds of murmuring voices from the stands were turning into a dull roar, and as James zipped along the ground, he could sense that every eye was fixated directly on him.

Good. They were going to enjoy this.

He waited until the last moment — the bright gold of the goalpost growing wider and wider and wider — hearing the crowd grow louder and louder — Glenn Toffee screaming about how he couldn’t watch someone die like this and begging Professor Sprout to cover his eyes for him —

And then, at the last second before impact, he changed course.

The cheering got louder and louder as he spiraled up, around and around the goalpost, close as he could. He was moving too fast to be dizzy, and he ignored the green blurs in the distance that had stopped to watch him, too worried about hitting the goalpost themselves to try and intercept him.

It was exactly the result James had hoped for ever since he’d come across the diagram of this particular move in the library’s ominously bloodstained copy of _Gruesome Agonies of Quidditch History_. He could tell he was supposed to be focusing on the lengthy description of the one time Podrick Ditch hadn’t successfully pulled off the Thundelarra Spiral Strike, but all he could see was that diagram, and the footnote reading that he’d scored successfully 53 times prior.

At this point, James didn’t really care if he scored at all. He could feel his heart beating faster and faster every time he looped around the post.

And everyone was cheering for him. Not the team. Him.

Over his head, he could see the Slytherin Keeper finally deciding to make his move, swooping down toward James. If he kept moving in this direction, the two of them would collide in about seven seconds, long before he was anywhere near the hoop.

So James stopped moving in that direction.

Half on instinct, he sharply pushed away from the post, cutting out toward one of the side goalposts just as Lovett blew past him.

The world was a washed-out whirling blur roaring past him, and James couldn’t have said for sure which of the other two goalposts he was even flying toward. But he knew that the Keeper was 50 feet behind him now, and not a single Chaser thought he was going in this direction. When he reached the top of the goalpost, he lazily passed the Quaffle straight through the hoop.

He thought the crowd was cheering before, but what they were doing now was something else entirely.

“That was absolutely amazing!” Toffee shrieked. “Wow! You don’t get more points for scoring really brilliantly, do you? That would be mental. That was mental.”

James smiled, soaking it in, looking all about him—

And then Teak appeared right in front of him, his bat going thunk as it kept a Bludger from turning James’s face into paste.

“Good work, Potter,” Teak shouted. “Now stop lollygagging and do it again.”

James didn’t argue. He dropped away from the hoop and headed back across the pitch. Shafiq had the Quaffle again, and the other four Chasers were seeming to orbit him in a tight pattern. Every time either Dorcas or Wilson got close to the Quaffle, Vance or Hayward were there, blocking their way. It was leaving Shafiq effectively untouched, able to soar straight down the pitch toward the Gryffindor goalposts.

A twinge of guilt flashed through James’s mind, but he crushed it down as he got closer. Yes, if he hadn’t been enjoying his little moment, he’d be there with the rest of them, maybe taking the Quaffle back from Slytherin. But even if Shafiq managed to score, that’d only be 10 points. They were still ahead, and they could probably widen their margin before Langley caught the Snitch. They just needed to—

“Looks like Slytherin is going for the goal!”

Toffee was right. Shafiq had slung out from under the melee and started to arc back up toward the left goalpost. James shifted his angle just so. He probably couldn’t get under the goal post to receive, but Dorcas was looking good. He could be in position for a pass, or block Shafiq if he missed.

He watched Shafiq as he went, studying his movements. It was odd. James couldn’t figure out a way he could get around Church, the way he was flying. Seemed more like he wanted to—

“Good gracious Jesus God!”

It happened in an instant.

Shafiq slammed straight into Church. Hard.

Whirling end-over-end, Church grabbed tight to her broomstick with both hands. She flew a good, sturdy Cleansweep Five, and James knew she’d be able to right herself in a minute.

She never had a chance. A Bludger James barely even saw smashed into her side, pushing her back and slamming her into the hoop of the goalpost itself before whistling off in another direction.

“Oh my god, Church is hit! Very, very hit!”

Hooch’s whistle was blowing for them to stop, but only the Slytherins obeyed. James’s teammates were flying as fast as him, straight to the goalpost where Church was just barely holding herself up by the armpit.

“I’m fine,” she was already telling Teak by the time James got there, though her voice was a half-octave higher than normal and all the blood had gone out of her face.

“Like hell you are,” Teak said. “I watched them hit that Bludger, Church. It was the Dopplebeater Defense — they both hit it at once! They can’t do that, Madam Hooch.”

“Teak, you know as well as I the Dopplebeater is perfectly legal.” Hooch was there now, soaring right up next to Church and drawing her wand. “Church, you can let go. I’ll float you down to the ground gentle.”

“No—” she protested, “—no, I can’t go to the ground. I have to think about goalposts. Slytherin.”

“The only thing you should be thinking about is the concussion you clearly are developing,” Hooch said. “And from the way your voice sounds I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you had a few ribs cracked too. You’re out, Church. No, Teak, no discussion. Frankly, she’s lucky not to be hurt worse.”

Teak looked back and forth between Hooch and Church, who was slowly sinking down to a trio of professors who had run out onto the pitch and conjured a stretcher. “But — the Slytherins — they—”

“The Beaters were doing their job, Teak,” Hooch said. “You’ll be getting a penalty shot, since Hayward slammed into your Keeper first. Take it and count yourself lucky.”

They didn’t feel lucky. Wilson took the penalty shot, cruising past the Slytherin Keeper easily. It was the last time they scored for an hour.

When James finally heard Madam Hooch’s whistle, recognizing Teak’s call for a time-out, he nearly fell off his broom with exhaustion. He and Wilson had been trying and failing to outmatch Slytherin’s three Chasers, while Dorcas filled in as a de facto Keeper — though she wasn’t much good at it, since she wasn’t allowed to actually block any shots Slytherin took at the goal. Between that, and the three penalty shots Slytherin had been allowed to take when she blocked their throws anyway, their opponents had managed to score more than 150 points.

“This is bloody bullshit.” Flume cursed like a drunk Auror, but James couldn’t dispute the sentiment. “I’m doing my best to knock Bludgers their way, but even if I crush Emmeline Vance’s bloody skull it’s gonna do fuck all if we don’t end this damn game soon.”

“I’m trying,” Langley said. He looked as bad as James felt. “The sun’s too damn bright; everything with a bit of glimmer looks like the Snitch.”

“Are you seriously fucking complaining that there’s too much daylight to see the goddamn—”

“Screw you, Flume; why don’t you take that bat out of your arse and—”

“Both of you—” Teak said. “Shut. Up.”

Their captain looked murderously angry. James hadn’t been able to pay much attention to anything but the Quaffle over the last hour, but he’d sensed from the trajectory of the Bludgers hurtling around them that Teak’s aim was off, and he’d seen him take a shot at one of the little iron balls about 20 minutes ago and miss so hard he almost flew directly into its path. This was his first game as their captain, and James was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t as ready as he’d thought he’d be.

“What’s the score now?” Teak asked, brows knitted together in thought.

“180 to 50,” Dorcas said, her voice softer than James had ever heard it. “I’m sorry, Teak. I shouldn’t be doing this. Maybe you or Flume—”

“—are both bloody awful at Keeping,” Teak interrupted. “You’re our best option, Dorcas. You know you almost made the team last year instead of Church in that position.”

“Can’t see why,” she replied. “I’m blowing it, Teak. A few more goals like this, and it won’t matter if Langley catches the Snitch in three minutes or three days.”

“We don’t have any other options,” their captain replied. “Langley, what if you tried to shadow Slytherin’s Seeker more directly?”

“I could,” Langley said, “but Knott’s got a Nimbus 1313, same as Potter. He’s way more agile up there than me, and there’s no way I could beat him to a Snitch in a race.”

“At least you could stall him,” Teak said. “Give Potter and Wilson a chance to try and score, get ourselves back on the board again…”

“That’s it,” James said.

Teak blinked. “What’s it?”

“We could stall them.”

“That’s what I said, Potter. Did you get hit by that Bludger after all?”

“No, no, no,” James waved his hands in front of him, trying to hold onto the idea that had gripped onto his brain with tiny little fingers. “Not Langley.”

Teak studied him closely before speaking again. “All right, Potter, I’m listening. What’s your idea?”

——

“They had better figure out how to win this game,” Sirius said, shading his eyes in a feeble attempt to better see the Gryffindor team, huddled together. “James is going to be a right wanker if he loses his first Quidditch match.”

“Sirius!”

“Well, he is!”

They’d been out here for hours, all three of them, taking turns holding up the banner that Sirius had to admit was cuter than he had given Remus and Peter credit for last night. Once again, everyone in Gryffindor House had given them a wide berth, which had been fine while Gryffindor was winning. But ever since Church had come off her broom, the hostility had been palpable.

It was not his favorite birthday of all time.

“They are definitely angry at _us_ because Gryffindor is losing,” Remus mumbled for the third time. “That doesn’t make any goddamn sense! Am I slinging hexes at Isaac Langley and then casting a Memory Charm on myself to forget or something?”

“Let it go, mate,” Sirius said. “Take it out on some furniture next full moon.”

Mentioning the full moon had the desired effect on Remus. “That’s not how it works,” he grumped. But he was quiet after, sulking in silence.

“Remind me how this works,” Peter said. “Can’t they just catch the Snitch and still win the game?”

“Sure, for now,” Sirius replied. “But they have to catch the Snitch first. _And_ they have to catch the Snitch before Slytherin gets 150 more points than them. _And_ even if they do catch the Snitch and win, Slytherin still scored a ton of points this game, which gives them a better chance of winning the Cup at the end of the year.”

“Wow, Sirius,” Remus teased, “you’re so sporty all of a sudden. Am I going to catch you putting up an Appleby Arrows poster on the wall in the dorms?”

“Well, James is all the way out there, and someone’s got to be the swotty one.”

Remus’s laugh blended with the tweet of Hooch’s whistle, and they looked back out at the pitch to see that the Gryffindor huddle was breaking up, and James and the others were returning to the air. Oddly, the girl Chaser seemed to be staying with James and Wilson.

“Hey, look,” Peter said, noticing the same thing. “Meadowes isn’t going back to the goalposts.”

“They’re just going to leave them open?” Remus asked. “That seems…”

“Daft?” Sirius suggested.

“I was going to say risky… but yes, it also seems pretty daft.”

Glenn Toffee’s voice came ringing out over the crowd again. “The teams are back in the air again, which is probably something Slytherin is happier about than Gryffindor—”

“Glenn…”

“Sorry, Professor Sprout, it’s just, look how sad all the Gryffindors are! Wow, I am glad I am sitting up here instead of out there. 130 points is a lot to be down, especially since nobody’s even come close to getting the Snitch…”

“Dear. Focus.”

“Right! Focus! Umm… Well, when Captain Teak called his time-out, Slytherin had just scored again, so Gryffindor is going to get the ball at the middle of the field. Looks like they’re letting the boy with the goggles have it now, that’s, uh, Potter, James Potter. And look, Dorcas Meadowes is with them again. That’s probably good, she was just awful at filling in as Keeper.

“And they’re going now! Everybody’s flying around in circles. Looks like Potter is going to try and make a shot at the goalposts right away — but, wait, no, has he dropped the ball? No, no, he’s just passed it back to the other guy. Whatshisname, Watson, Wilson? Watson is flying in little loop-de-loops around the opposing team now, very cool. Not sure how useful but very cool.

“Ooh, that Bludger almost got him! Now Emmeline Vance is guarding him, very tight, don’t see how he can take a shot at the goal now. Doesn’t look like he’s going to! He just passed back to Meadowes in the direction Vance wasn’t looking. Now Meadowes passes to Potter. Potter’s just passed it back. Now they’re flying away from the goalposts. Why would they do that? This is very confusing and I’m starting to wonder if I’ve misunderstood the rules of this game. Professor Sprout—”

“Oh my god,” Remus breathed. “They’re not trying to score.”

“What?”

“Watch them, Sirius. They’re not taking a shot at the goal. They’re just trying to keep Slytherin from getting the Quaffle back.”

Sirius studied James and his teammates, tracing the path of the Quaffle as it went around and around the pitch. There was something to what Remus was saying. Neither James nor any other Gryffindor had gotten anywhere near the hoops in the last few minutes. And there hadn’t been nearly this much passing of the Quaffle earlier in the game.

“I can’t tell if this is very exciting or not exciting at all,” Glenn shouted, “but I’m sure someone will tell me eventually!”

“As a plan, it’s not bad,” Sirius said. “James and Wilson were getting their arses handed to them before. With Meadowes in the mix…”

“Exactly,” Remus said. “Like you were saying to Peter—”

The Slytherin side of the stands erupted into cheers, and Sirius and Remus looked up at the same instant. Shafiq had managed to nick the Quaffle somehow and was soaring past them, toward the unprotected goalposts at the other end of the field.

“Shafiq’s got the Quaffle! Shafiq’s got the Quaffle and there’s no one between him and the Gryffindor goalposts and — oh no, watch out!”

Shafiq didn’t watch out. When the Bludger hit the tail of his broom, he was close enough to the stands that Sirius could hear the splinters, and the slew of curses that came out of his mouth. A moment later, he heard instead the crunch of two bodies colliding, as Dorcas Meadowes sideswiped him and effortlessly snatched the Quaffle out of his hands before he fell off his broomstick. Sirius could just barely make out her shouting “That’s for Martha, you troll!” over the sound of every Gryffindor leaping to their feet. Himself included.

“Effortless recovery by Meadowes!” Glenn Toffee sounded like he was coming around to their team, all of a sudden. “Luckily for Shafiq, it looks like Madam Hooch turned around just in time to keep him from going splat right on the grass… Doesn’t look like she’s calling a foul but it doesn’t look like Shafiq’s getting up either… And now Meadowes looks to be doing a bit of a victory lap while the Mediwizards pull him off the field. What a game! This certainly beats Gobstones.”

Emmeline Vance spent almost five minutes hovering off the ground, arguing with Hooch, but by the time play resumed the energy had shifted. James and the others still kept the same strategy, refusing to press their numerical advantage by going for a goal, but with one less Slytherin on the court their strategy seemed less desperate and more triumphant. Within a half-hour, every completed pass back and forth was eliciting a little cheer, and even when Vance or Hayward managed to steal the Quaffle back for a few moments, it wasn’t long before Gryffindor had it back again.

And then, in the midst of it all, there was a moment when the two players everyone had practically forgotten about went into a simultaneous dive, hands reached out for something Sirius could almost just make out…

“It’s the Snitch!” Sirius shouted, jumping up on top of the bench in spite of himself, trying to get a better view even as his words made the entire section break into pandemonium.

They were neck and neck, the two Seekers, moving so fast they barely looked like anything but a red and green streak…

And then, out of the corner of his eye, Sirius saw James in the air, holding the Quaffle, watching what was happening below him. And he watched his friend cock his arm back and chuck the Quaffle down at those blurs. Watched the green blur jerk away from the red ball like it was a Bludger, corkscrewing out of arm’s reach of—

“The Snitch!” Toffee cried. “Langley has the Snitch! Gryffindor wins!”

Sirius had never seen or heard anything like it. The madness of Bellatrix’s wedding was a tenth of the frenzy he was suddenly experiencing. Remus was jumping up and down like Quidditch was his life. Peter was screaming something Sirius couldn’t hear, his face a jumble of confusion. And everyone around him was hugging, cheering, slapping him on the back. For a moment, it didn’t matter that Sirius and the others had lost all those house points. They were Gryffindors, and they had won!

The celebrating had even started to drown out the nonsense Glenn was muttering when Sirius looked out at the pitch to see James and the others had mostly stopped celebrating and were floating down toward the changing rooms. An impulse grabbed him, and he got Remus and Peter’s attention.

“Let’s go congratulate James!” he shouted, and though he doubted either could truly hear him, they got the message, and were headed out of the stands a few moments later.

“That was amazing!” Peter said. “Way more exciting than the other games James has made us go to!”

“Did I see that right?” Remus was asking. “It looked like James threw the Quaffle at the Slytherin Seeker. Is that legal?”

“Who cares?” Sirius said. “It worked, didn’t it? It was bloody brilliant and it worked!”

Sirius remembered the way to the changing rooms from tryouts last year, and it didn’t seem like any of their fellow Gryffindors had gotten the same idea. They were alone as they hurried across the ground toward the entrance, celebratory shouts slipping out from the open hallway.

“James?!” Sirius shouted as they hurried in. “You were brilliant! You all were bloody—”

Sirius had forgotten something. Something that had never occurred to him. Something he had never realized he needed to remember or forget or remember not to forget.

Steam was billowing out of the changing room as he, Remus and Peter rounded the corner, and from the far end of the room he could hear the sound of running water. Off to the side, a screen that seemed to be both shiny and hazy at the same time cut the entry room in half; he could hear Dorcas Meadowes shouting something triumphant from the other side.

Not that he had a clue what it was, because…

The rest of the Quidditch team was turning to look at them from their respective lockers.

Lockers where shirts and pants and robes hung untouched.

Untouched by the chatty, jubilant men of the Quidditch team.

Naked men of the Quidditch team.

Naked, wet, smiling, naked, laughing, buff, NAKED men.

It had never occurred to Sirius that this would be a problem.

It was a problem.

Why was it a problem?

It was a problem because he was looking at them.

No, the looking wasn’t the problem. The others were looking too. The boys in the room were looking at each other too.

The problem was that Sirius was feeling something, when he looked at them.

There was a tug somewhere behind his stomach, gentle and rough all at once.

He felt the world shift all around him like he was on a moving stairwell, his intended destination diverted, lost forever.

His heart had started beating the way he’d always expected it to one day, the moment his eyes saw something his heart wanted.

He was Sirius Black, Great Grand Disappointment of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, and the sight of a handful of naked teenage boys had done for him what 14 years of living with his family had never managed to do.

It broke him.

It was the most wonderful, marvelous, unexpectedly beautiful sight he had ever seen.

And it broke him. All the way down. Further than he’d ever thought he could fall.

The only thing that saved him from collapsing on the spot was that not a single person in the room had noticed anything was wrong. They all looked up when the three of them ran in, of course, but then all eyes were back on James, who was beaming with excitement and recognition in a way that kept any of his teammates from telling them to leave.

“Guys! We did it!” James shouted. He quickly wrapped a towel around his waist, to Sirius’s great relief. James was the first person in the room who had chosen to do that, and it gave Sirius someone who he could look at without having to avoid everything below their navels. Not that the muscles above their navels were much better. Or their faces. Had Sirius just been walking around the castle not looking at a single person’s face? Did faces automatically look nicer when they weren’t the only naked body part you could see?

“You were watching, right?” James asked, walking away from his teammates toward them. “I saw you in the stands at the beginning but it was too crazy to see you at the end.”

“No, we were there the whole time!” Peter said. “It was amazing. We didn’t think you were going to win, and then… well, you won!”

“Keep those boys on your side of the locker room, James!” Dorcas shouted from behind the screen. “I may be excited about us winning, but not so excited that I’m gonna let your friends get an eyeful.”

Sirius was already getting an eyeful. Except he shouldn’t be thinking of what he was seeing — trying to pretend he wasn’t seeing, but seeing nonetheless — as an eyeful _at all_.

“Look,” he said quickly, trying to keep his voice from shaking and his eyes from gaping at all the everything happening around him. “We didn’t mean to storm in, and you’re all bloody naked; we can’t bloody celebrate while you’re naked.”

“Oh, grow up, Sirius,” James said, still grinning from ear to ear. “We share a room; you’ve got to’ve seen me in the buff by now.”

It wasn’t James in the buff that was the problem. It was Teak, and Flume, and Langley, and even scrawny Wilson, who looked a lot less scrawny with his clothes off…

“No, Sirius is right,” Remus said.

Sirius was jealous of how level-headed Remus seemed, casually looking at the locker room like everyone was wearing clothes and no one was sweaty or wet or exposed.

“We’re just excited for you, mate!” he continued. “All of you.”

“Appreciate it,” Teak said, grinning as he finally wrapped a towel around his waist and walked toward them. “It’s Remus, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “And this is Peter and Sirius.”

“Well your boy here did great today,” Teak said, clapping James on the shoulder. “So you’d better make sure nobody’s broken into the celebratory Butterbeer upstairs yet. We’ve all bloody earned it.”

Teak was so close now that Sirius could have reached out and touched him. He wanted to, almost. So he held his arms tight at his sides, as tight as they could go.

“It’s actually Sirius’s birthday,” James said. “And, by the way, I fully plan to take credit for all of the festivities as my present to you, mate.”

If James got him any more presents like this, it might just kill him.

“Yeah, thanks,” Sirius choked out, trying to look at James’s face and nothing but James’s face. “We’ll, uh, start celebrating now and see you up there.”

As soon as they were out of the changing room, Sirius took a clandestine, internal sigh of relief. They were outside, away from whatever had caused his momentary lapse in brain function. With every step they took on the way back to the castle, he would feel a little more normal again.

He took a step. Then another. Walked behind Remus and Peter all the way back from the pitch, giving single-word responses as necessary, faking a smile every time they reminded him that it was his birthday.

They came back through the castle gates, climbed one set of stairs after another, and finally made their way through the portrait hole to the common room, where Kris Teak’s Butterbeer was still safe and there was plenty more where that came from.

And as his fellow Gryffindors celebrated victory by the slimmest of margins, and his best friends in the world raised their own toast to the beginning of his 14th year, Sirius just sat there, existing as little as possible, trying to will his heart to stop beating triple-pace, feeling like something very far from normal.


	7. Can't Buy Me Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ever since the boys got back to Hogwarts, Peter's been acting strange. This is the moment the others find out why.

Remus skimmed his History of Magic essay one more time and decided to give up on it. He wasn't particularly proud of what he’d written, but he supposed it didn't matter much. Binns never seemed to care about the content of an essay as long as it was the right length and you wrote down whatever the essay was about every four or five lines or so.

It was frustrating that History of Magic, as a class, was always so boring, since Remus had the sense it could have been so interesting. This week, they’d been studying a group of wizards who roamed the British countryside a millennium ago, fighting corruption and dark wizards without revealing their identities. That should have been so cool… and instead, half the class fell asleep, including all three of his friends.

With a sigh, Remus scrawled a title on his essay — _Reflections on the Historical Impact of the Mercian Marauders_ — and rolled it up to stuff back into his bag for later.

A sound at the portrait hole made him look up. James and Sirius were coming back into the common room, along with a handful of other students who flocked to the comfier chairs in the room.

“Did you finish your essay?” James asked, sitting down opposite Remus.

“Yes,” he replied. “No thanks to you lot, bothering me all through dinner.”

“Oh, we’re sorry,” Sirius said. “You were just being really dramatic about how much homework you have.”

“I still have a ton of homework.”

“Not any more than me! I’m taking the same number of classes as you this term.”

“One of them is Care of Magical Creatures. You got to play with Nifflers this week.”

“And I lost thirteen Sickles for that privilege, thank you very much.”

James snorted with laughter. “I still think that’s hilarious. What are you doing carrying money around the castle in the first place?”

“It was leftover change from Hogsmeade weekend,” Sirius replied. “I kept forgetting to take it out of my pocket.”

“Well, that Niffler certainly helped you out then.”

“What’s Peter up to?” Remus asked. “He’s not still down at dinner, is he?”

James and Sirius looked back at him like he’d begun speaking Mermish.

“What are you talking about?” James said. “He went looking for you ages ago. I assumed you knew where he’d gone off to.”

“I haven’t seen him,” Remus replied. “I came straight here after I left the Great Hall.”

“That’s weird,” James said. “I wonder where—”

The portrait hole opened behind them, and Peter came through, his face hidden in the dim shadows of the room. He didn’t look up at them or anything else, just made a beeline for the boys’ dormitory stairs.

“There he is,” Sirius said, “but it looks like he hasn’t seen us.”

“I’ll grab him,” Remus said. “I could use a chance to stretch my legs.”

Peter was already halfway up to the first landing when Remus caught up with him. “Hey, Peter, where’re you — what the hell!”

Peter had turned slightly to look at Remus, and in the torchlight he could see that his friend’s face was battered and bruised, with a mixture of red, black and yellow splotches everywhere he could see, and there were stains of what looked like blood and vomit on the front of his robes.

“It’s fine,” Peter said, trying to pull away. “Lemme alone.”

“It’s _not_ fine.” Remus grabbed his arm tighter, and frantically looked back at James and Sirius, who he could see getting to their feet. “What in the name of Merlin happened to you?”

——

**September 23 - Martine Grey, Elizabeth Howell, Abigail Newton**

Peter wasn’t really surprised that the rest of the Gryffindors were ignoring him and the others still. Frankly, given all the gossiping about his dad, he was surprised it had taken so long.

Then again, there was a difference between _your dad_ committing war crimes and _you_ committing a major violation of Hogwarts school rules. Sure, the first one might be worse, but it wasn’t a very “Gryffindor” thing to blame him for his parents’ mistakes.

_(At least, not openly.)_

Sirius’s mistake two weeks back had given everyone the excuse they needed to get over their Gryffindor pride, though. Not even Daisy Mandel was still talking to him, though she at least had the decency to look terribly guilty about it. The four of them had each other, but that was it — all of them except James were getting the full silent treatment, and even James was starting to get glares now that it had been close to a fortnight.

It made everything fairly miserable, but Sunday breakfast more than most.

“You think I can get Mary MacDonald to loan me her copy of the _Prophet_ when she’s done with it?” Remus asked. “I’m terribly out of touch with the news.”

“Maybe if you let her spit on it first,” Sirius said. “Otherwise, I’m pretty sure she’s just going to bite your head off again, like she did when you asked her for a quill in History of Magic on Friday.”

“Maybe I just need to get my own subscription.” Remus pulled out a scrap of parchment and started scribbling numbers down on it. “My dad promised to send a little money for Hogsmeade visits every month or so. If I don’t buy any sweets…”

“Mate, you’re gonna buy sweets,” James laughed. “Have you ever been to Honeydukes? My parents have a shipment owled in every Christmas and my dad basically goes into a sugar daze for a week.”

“I could at least pinch some extra from Pomfrey when I’m… y’know. In the hospital wing.”

“You should do that anyway,” Sirius replied. “Not fair, you getting an allowance of chocolate when the rest of us just have to suffer sweetsless.”

“I think it evens out, considering why I’m getting said allowance…”

“New topic,” Peter interrupted.

_(I hate talking about Remus’s “furry little problem” in public. People are always listening, even when they don’t look it…)_

“Did any of you finish our Defense Against the Dark Arts assignment yet? The one where we’re supposed to match jinxes to the languages they’re based on?”

“Haven’t even started,” James said. “I honestly figured I’d just guess.”

“Frankly, I’m more interested in finding out what they all do,” Sirius interrupted. “‘ _Agex Gorgoglex’_ sounds particularly gruesome.”

Remus snorted. “Cast it in a mirror and tell me how you feel in a couple hours, will you? I could use a good laugh.”

“You know what it does?!”

“So you’ve done the assignment then?” Peter pointedly glared at Sirius, who shrank back.

 _(Couldn’t Sirius focus on_ one _conversation that wasn’t about him?)_

“I finished it during Muggle Studies last week,” Remus admitted. “It wasn’t really that hard if you’ve been paying attention. And Muggle Studies is so easy. I can’t believe I let you convince me to take that class. Our assignment this week is to write about football, for heaven’s sake. Not any specific teams, even, just like ‘what is football?’”

“Well come on, Remus,” James said. “Turn it over. Share the wealth.”

“I can’t just tell you the answers,” Remus said. “You won’t remember it for exams.”

“We don’t even know Professor Aelling’s going to make it to exams,” Peter countered. “Brocken and Lexington didn’t.”

“Mr. Pettigrew makes a compelling argument, Remus.”

“Yeah, come on, Remus.”

“Mates, I have to draw the line somewhere,” Remus said, crossing his arms grumpily. “I’m already giving James and Sirius half the answers for Muggle Studies. None of you have written a single Potions essay without my help since February. And James, you pestered me for an hour last week about Care of Magical Creatures. I’m not even in that class!”

“Well, you’re sort of a magical creature,” James muttered under his breath. “I was just trying to get your perspective.”

“You were writing an essay on Flobberworms!”

_(Good grief.)_

“Look, it’s fine,” Peter said with a sigh. “I’ll just go up and ask Aelling myself. I’m pretty sure they have office hours on Sundays… You guys’ll come with me, right?”

But James shook his head right away. “Sorry, Peter. I’ve got Quidditch practice right after this. It might rain later so Teak wants us to fly as long as we can before the sky opens up.”

“I can’t either,” Sirius said. “Sorry, mate.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to.”

“…Really?”

Sirius shugged. “Look, Peter, when Defense Against the Dark Arts stops being a foreign language course, Professor Aelling’s got my full attention. Until then… Well, the assignment’s multiple choice, and I have a one-in-four chance of guessing right on each question. I like those odds.”

“You’re all the worst,” Peter grumbled, getting to his feet and slinging his bag over his shoulder. “I’ll see you back up in the common room later today? Where I will _also_ not be giving either of you the answers to this assignment.”

“Seems only fair,” Sirius said, reaching for his third muffin. “Give Professor Aelling my best.”

Peter made it halfway to the office before remembering what happened the last time he visited a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. Images started to flood his mind — a room in shambles, Professor Egg sitting on his trunk, the eyes that wouldn't stop staring at Peter as he delivered a semi-manic monologue about the Death Eaters who’d killed his parents and driven his wife mad.

He stopped on the stairs, thinking for a moment. His first impulse was to turn back, demand that James or Remus come with him. But the idea took less than an instant to reject.

_(What was he going to do, tell his friends he was scared to go into an office?)_

It turned out he was worrying over nothing. When he got to the door of Egg’s old office and knocked, nothing but silence answered his knuckles. Not the silence of a grieving professor, this time — regular, normal silence, and a sturdy deadbolt that resisted his light, very anxious push on the sturdy wooden door.

He must have been wrong about Aelling’s hours, Peter realized, stepping back into the hall. He would just have to go down to the library and work on the assignment there. Maybe Madam Fludd could point him in the direction of some spell dictionaries. That had to be a thing, right?

But before he could start descending the stairs, he heard a voice calling to him: “Are you lost?”

Peter turned to see three girls coming toward him — Ravenclaws, he was pretty sure. The only one he sort of recognized was a pale girl in back who he’d seen studying something with Nabin in the library.

“No, no,” Peter said, desperately trying to save face. They had clearly thought he was a first- or second-year from behind, he realized. He tried to stand up as straight as he could.

_(Stupid bloody lack of growth spurt.)_

“I was just going to meet with Professor Aelling,” he said. “I thought they’d be in the office, but—”

“Well of course not,” the girl in the middle said, looking down her button nose at him. “She’s not in that office this year.”

Peter hesitated — not just because the girl had broken the unspoken rule that no one was making a guess on whether Aelling was a man or a woman until some hard evidence turned up on either side of the argument. He had no reason to disbelieve what she was telling him, he supposed, but…

“Their classroom’s right down the hall,” he protested.

“I know, weird, right? But yeah, Elizabeth and I did the same thing right at start of term. We wanted to see what she’d done with the space, since Professor Egg’s offices were so creepy.”

“Oh.” That was a weird reason to visit a professor, but Peter was not going to question the weird things Ravenclaws did. “Any chance you can give me directions, or…”

Weirdly, Elizabeth and the girl in the middle didn’t answer right away. They just gave each other this strange little sideways look. It was something like the look on Remus’s face at breakfast, when he was trying to determine how much money he needed for that _Prophet_ subscription.

The third girl seemed to sense the same weirdness as Peter, and tapped the button-nosed girl on her elbow. “Martine, didn’t you say they’re up in one of those empty tower rooms now?”

“No,” said the other girl, glaring at her for some reason. “You’re being stupid, Abigail. Here’s how you get there, Pettigrew.”

In retrospect, Peter should have been suspicious the minute she said his name.

Martine’s directions were far from simple, but what directions were in this castle? She’d told him that Professor Aelling was incredibly paranoid, and wanted a secluded office specifically so they could practice their spellcrafting in private. The logic made sense. And so did the directions, sort of.

From the old Defense Against the Dark Arts offices, Peter went down the Serpentine Corridor toward the east wing of the castle. The girls said he was supposed to go up the accordion stairs, no matter which floor they unfolded up to today, because whether it was the fourth or fifth floor he could still take the spiral stairs a couple doors down, which only stopped on the fourth, fifth and first floors.

When he got to the first floor, he’d be in that weird part of the castle that didn’t really connect with anywhere else, where there were half as many torches as there should be and no windows.

_(That checked. It was half-past ten, and for all he knew it was twilight.)_

From the spiral stair, he was supposed to go to his left, down the marble corridor with all the hideous obsidian gargoyles. The first time he saw a hallway to his right, he was practically there. There was just a short staircase at the end of the hall that went up to a small blue door. That was Aelling’s office — just on the other side of the blue door.

Peter’s mind was dizzy by the time he got to the first floor.

_(This can’t have been the best way to get here, right?)_

But he kept going. He was going to find this office, dammit, even if it was the last thing he did.

So he ignored the gargoyles, found the passage to his right, and then the small staircase with the blue door at the top of the steps. As he took the stairs, he chuckled to himself a little.

_(If Professor Aelling really wants privacy, they’ve done a good job of it. Even with directions, I barely—)_

On the seventh step, Peter’s foot pressed down on nothing but dead air.

He almost didn’t know he was falling until he slammed into the slick walls of the slide, none of which gave his fingernails even the slightest ridge to hold onto. By the time he realized what was happening, he was already coming out the other end — his feet pushing a hinged circle of wood out of the way so he could be properly deposited on a very unforgiving stone floor.

Ouch was an understatement.

When the stars cleared from his vision, leaving him with nothing but pitch-black darkness in all directions, Peter hobbled himself up on his aching knees and pulled out his wand. “Lumos!”

_(Thank you, magic.)_

A pearl of light grew from the tip of his wand, illuminating the full room. Peter was disappointed by how quickly it happened. The chamber he had fallen into was only a few paces wide in any direction. Against the wall behind him, there was a stack of large wooden barrels, four by three, labeled with the name of increasingly perilous-sounding cleaning supplies. Cluttering the corners and a shelf to his left were an unruly mix of brooms, mops, brushes, rags, buckets and who knew what else. In one slightly less populated corner, a knee-high faucet drip-drip-dripped into a rusty drain. And on the last remaining wall, there was a single small doorway.

Peter went toward the door as soon as he saw it. The door pulled inward — or it would have, if it hadn’t been deadbolted shut from the other side. Peter tugged and tugged on the door. Not a bit of movement. He pushed, in case it was one of those stupid doors that only looked like a pull-door. It wasn’t. He pointed his wand at the door, said “ _Alohamora”_ a dozen times, with a dozen different inflections.

Nothing.

_(I’m trapped. Trapped.)_

McGonagall’s lecture about the Cavern was suddenly floating back up through his subconscious mind.

_(“risking your lives…not one of you considered the possibility that a concealed magical chamber might someday move, or close up, potentially with you still within”)_

“Hey!” Peter shouted, suddenly banging on the wooden door with all his might. “Is anybody out there? Hello? Hello??”

There was no answer. Or if there was, Peter couldn’t hear it. The door was sturdy, barely even vibrating from the pounding of his fists, and the stone walls only echoed his own voice back at him.

“I’m stuck in here! Can anyone hear me?!”

Peter knew they couldn’t, but he kept screaming anyway. He was trapped in this storeroom. Trapped.

He ransacked the room, tossing its contents back and forth as he scrambled from one corner to another, feeling every brick in the wall. Nothing gave way, opening a secret passage. There were no glimmers of enchanted stone, no magic mops that could break down doors. No exits except the one that was barred and locked.

_(No one knows I’m here. No one is going to find me.)_

He tried a few spells, but he didn’t know how to cast anything that could actually break down a door yet. With all those maybe-flammable cleaning supplies and no other means of escape, he couldn’t risk a Fire-Making Charm. _Finite Incantatem_ did nothing except irritate him. And the Knockback Jinx he tried ricocheted off the door and bounced around the room for 20 minutes, finally dissipating after it collided with one of the barrels, knocking it off the rack and spraying an olive green syrup all over the room.

Peter stayed in the corner for a while after that. Even after the syrup stopped sizzling.

_(When was the last time someone came in this room? How long will it take before the others notice I never came back from Professor Aelling’s office?)_

Peter spent a half-hour or so examining the slide he’d come down on. It was too steep to climb, he realized quickly. He must be at least on the ground floor, maybe lower. If he was in the dungeons, he might be over by the Slytherin common room. James had told him where it was, once, but he couldn’t get a good grip on the castle layout because every time he tried to think about it, the room felt like it was getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

He’d asked his mum to buy him a wristwatch over the summer — after being trapped in that Ministry office, he’d decided to never be without a timepiece again — so he knew that it took about two-and-a-half hours before his stomach started rumbling. It was only another 90 minutes before the shakes started, though whether that was from hunger or fear was an open question

There was a short period of mania four hours in — shortly after he finally broke down and pissed down the drain — when he convinced himself that he had found his solution; he could widen the drain, and crawl out that way. Bending a fingernail back trying to pry the rusty thing out of the ground sobered him up fast.

_(No one’s coming for me. I’m going to be a story they scare first-years with. The boy who fell through the stairs.)_

If someone had come through the door in the first hour, Peter might not have started thinking about why he was in this situation in the first place. But they didn’t. And after the banging on the door, and the screaming, and the pissing down the drain, and the cowering in the corner, and the crying, there wasn’t much else to think about.

“They couldn’t have known this would happen,” Peter said to himself aloud. “There’s no way. The castle is too big to know all its tricks.”

_(You know some of the castle’s tricks that no one else knows. You know about the Trophy Room. The Cavern. A half-dozen other nooks and crannies.)_

“They said that’s where Professor Aelling’s office was.”

_(The third girl didn’t. She said Professor Aelling had moved upstairs. The other two told you to come down here.)_

“No.”

_(They knew this would happen.)_

“No.”

_(She knew your name. She called you Pettigrew. She knew you. She wanted you to fall down here.)_

“No! No no no no no no no no—”

Peter heard a noise. The first noise he hadn’t made in six hours.

_(The door!)_

It swung open, revealing a thin, sallow-cheeked man with stringy black hair, bulging eyes, and a fluffy white cat bounding about his ankles, looking at Peter with snakey green eyes.

“What is it, Mrs. Elton?” Filch croaked, eyes not settled on Peter yet. “You’ve been meowing all the way down here and— Boy, what the devil?”

Peter burst into motion. The cat screamed, a pitiful wail that distracted Filch long enough for Peter to physically shove him back against the door as he passed into the open hall beyond.

“How dare you little—”

But Peter barely heard the rest, he was running too fast, running from the room as much as Filch, who seemed more worried about whether Peter had stepped on Mrs. Elton than actually going after him.

When he made it up to the ground floor, only a staircase away, the Great Hall was filled with students, happily tucking into a roast chicken.

“Peter!” James said, stuffing half a potato into his mouth. “Where’ve you been all day, mate? Change your mind about helping us with that assignment?”

——

“I just want you to leave me alone,” Peter shouted, as Remus and the others hustled him into the third-years’ dormitory.

“Yeah, don’t think that’s gonna happen, mate,” Sirius said, as he closed and sealed the entrance for privacy. “You look like you’ve gotten in a fight with a baby dragon.”

“I’m fine,” Peter said again. But he was holding his side oddly, and Remus could see in the brighter light of their bedroom that some of the markings he’d taken for bruises were actually angry red boils.

“Peter, come on,” James said. “You cannot just come up here and hide until we go away. We’re your friends. You have to tell us what happened.”

“I’m gonna get in the shower,” Peter said, limping away from them, “and go to bed. I don’t care what you do.”

“You can’t go to bed!” Sirius said. “It’s not even 8!”

Remus narrowly resisted the urge to push Sirius out the door and down a flight of stairs.

“What do you think happened to him?” James said, as soon as they heard the shower start running.

“I have no idea,” Remus replied. “You two were the last ones who saw him. Not me.”

“He just said he was going to look for you. He didn’t even say where.”

“Did you see those things on his face? Why do they look familiar?”

“I’ve seen them before,” Remus realized. “Remember when Angie Trelawney found out Doreen McRoan had been snogging her boyfriend?”

“Right!” James said. “She used that amazing hex, the one that made McRoan’s face all splotchy. I’m still mad I wasn’t paying attention to remember what the incantation was.”

“Those are the same sort of splotches on Peter’s face.”

“Okay, sure,” Sirius said. “So clearly Peter’s been snogging someone’s boyfriend. Uh. Metaphorically, I mean.”

“Weird choice of metaphor,” James said, giving Sirius an odd look.

Remus interrupted before the others could go all the way off track. “The point is Peter got on someone’s bad side. But whose?”

“I mean, nobody in the castle is really our biggest fan this year,” Sirius said, “but I don’t know anyone who would do that to him. It wasn’t just the boils. His face was bloody and bruised; he was in a _fight_.”

“That’s what I can’t understand,” James said. “Picking a fight with one of us, I could sort of see. Who would pick a fight with _Peter_?”

——

**October 9 - Evan Kirkpatrick and Stephen Flynn**

When Peter awoke on his birthday, he was surprised to find himself alone in the dormitory, with an unusual amount of sunlight pouring in.

_(You’re late you’re late hurry and get ready—)_

But the panic vanished the minute his feet touched the floor. It was Tuesday. He didn’t have any classes on Tuesday mornings, not until Charms. Usually the boys woke him up anyway, dragged him to breakfast with them, but since it was his birthday…

His suspicions were confirmed when he noticed a small plate of scones and muffins on his nightstand, along with a note and a large package. He grabbed one of the treats first —

_(Pumpkin and cinnamon, delicious!)_

— and then picked up the note.

_Peter,_

_Convinced the rest of the chaps to keep quiet this morning and let you sleep in — no easy task, as you can imagine, but hopefully worth it. I’ll be stopping in the library to return that book I borrowed for our Astronomy homework after Arithmancy, so if you get up before then you can always meet me there. Otherwise I’ll come back here while James and Sirius are in Creatures, so you don’t have to worry about missing Charms. Enjoy your breakfast!_

_Remus_

_PS: The package isn’t from us. Showed up for you at breakfast! Looks like it’s from your mum._

Peter swallowed the last bite of pumpkin scone and eyed the package warily. He and his mum still weren’t on the best of terms. Her letters to him alternated between pretending everything was fine and making veiled inquiries into how long he was going to stay mad at her. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to read either sort of letter today.

But he opened the package anyway, undoing the twine and tearing away the brown paper. Inside were three smaller packages, wrapped in colorful paper instead, and another note — this one clearly in his mother’s handwriting.

_Happy birthday, Peter!_

_It’s hard for me to believe that my little glowworm can be so old already. 14! You’re becoming a young man now. It seems like only yesterday that I was teaching you to walk, holding your hand as we walked to the store, taking you to Mrs. Blaeksprut’s for school every morning. I thought it would be hard to get settled in this house again, but somehow I find that all my good memories are keeping away the bad ones. And all my good memories are of you, Peter._

Peter resisted the impulse to audibly make a gagging sound, despite the lack of an audience.

_I hope you and your friends have some fun plans for this evening to celebrate. Bertie and I will certainly be thinking of you. He insisted on sending along his own birthday present for you — it’s the one in the red and white stripes. Some books he says he read when he was a little bit older than you are now. He says there’s magic in them, though it’s nothing like real magic. Can you imagine, Muggle children reading stories of magical adventures, while real wizards and witches walk among them? He and I both hope you enjoy them._

Peter picked up the striped parcel, testing the weight of the three books within, and chucked them directly into the rubbish bin.

_I don’t know if your father kept up with giving you new pants and socks on your birthday every year, but I’ve included some, and suspect you would not enjoy opening those in front of your classmates. They’re in the green parcel._

_The polka dotted one is your proper present from me. If you don’t like it, please write to me and I can get you something different. I know your robes will cover them up, but on a trip to Hogsmeade or a weekend afternoon with your friends… you can be a little more yourself than the Hogwarts dress code normally allows, I suppose._

_At any rate: Know they come with my love, and my continuing apologies for being less a part of your life for your last few birthdays. I hope you’ll continue to allow me to make up for it in the years to come, my dear Peter. I truly do._

Peter thanked his lucky stars that he hadn’t opened that green parcel in front of anyone else. His mother was right; if he’d unfurled a half-dozen pants in front of Sirius and the others, they’d never let him live it down.

He studied the remaining present for a moment before opening it. The box was flat and rectangular, and suspiciously light. Clothes, from what his mum’s note said. But what could she have gotten him that she was so unsure about…

_(Oh. Of course.)_

Right on the top of the stack, the faces of the Beatles stared back at him. They’d been printed on a dark t-shirt. One of several, he could already see. David Bowie, Pink Floyd, The Who…

And there, at the very bottom, a grey t-shirt with thin red lines tracing out the words and symbols of Led Zeppelin.

Before he could stop himself, Peter’s mind was racing back to last Christmas, the concert at Ally Pally.

He’d never told his mother what had happened at that concert. Doing so would have meant admitting that he’d known about his father’s behavior longer than he’d implied, longer than he’d told the Ministry. And that he’d lied to her after the holidays. And that he’d known everything about his father’s actions — or at least suspected them, somewhere in the back of his mind — and done absolutely nothing to stop them.

Not that he knew what he would have done… or whether he would have wanted to do anything at all… or which of his parents he was actually better off with…

But the one thing he knew was that he was not going to wear this goddamn shirt.

Peter put the lid back on the box and shoved it under his bed to deal with later. His wristwatch said he had about 20 minutes before Remus got out of Arithmancy.

_(Good. Not much time to spend thinking about anything else.)_

He was in the shower in two minutes, out in five, dressed in nine and barreling out the portrait hole in a flat 15. The halls were just starting to fill in with students again — either hurrying to second period after a free morning or getting out of class early — but no one Peter properly recognized. Which made sense. Since most of the Gryffindor third-years were in Care of Magical Creatures, nobody came up this high in the castle after breakfast. Most of the time, he just went with James and Sirius and the others to hang out in a small lounge on the second floor.

He wasn’t with them now, though, and he didn’t really have the wherewithal to take the Grand Staircase all the way down to the library, walking past even a reduced number of students who now thought he was both a secret Death Eater-in-training and one of the stupidest rulebreakers in Hogwarts history. So he turned off the main thoroughfare and took a smaller staircase down to the fifth floor. It was quieter here, and Peter relaxed a bit, adjusting his mental map of Hogwarts. He could go around the next two corners here, and then there was that steep stair that nobody took that went all the way down to the second floor, so as long as he didn’t fall down and die…”

“Hey! You’re Peter Pettigrew, right?”

Peter turned to see two boys looking back at him. They’d passed him a moment ago, he realized, but something had made them stop. The one who’d spoken to him was tall and pale, and looked a combination of surprised and angry. Next to him, his friend’s face had flushed.

“Evan, I said not to do this.”

_(Do what?)_

Evan wasn’t listening. “I asked you a question, kid.”

“Y-yeah,” Peter stammered, taking a step back. “Can I—”

“Are you gonna say anything, Stephen, or do I have to?”

“I don’t want to say anything,” Stephen said. “We’re going to be late for class, we should just—”

“You know his family’s basically homeless now?” Evan said, his wand suddenly in his hand. “Their whole block got blown up last March in a Death Eater attack. Miracle they were out getting groceries. All the other Muggles on their block just ended up dead.”

_(Oh no oh no this is just like before.)_

“I-I-I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I— That wasn’t my fault.” Peter looked behind him quickly. There were no doors in this hallway; the only stairwell he knew was the steep one he was heading towards and he’d break his neck trying to take it at a run.

“Nobody’s buying that line, Pettigrew. Maybe you need some new garbage to spit out of that filthy Death Eater mouth of yours.”

“I-I-I-”

“Evan—”

“ _Frogga Reguelo!”_

A green shimmer seemed to hop straight from the boy’s wand into Peter’s chest before he could so much as move, and he fell straight backwards, slamming onto the ground with a thud. He barely felt the pain of the landing, though. It was like a giant was leaning on his chest, smothering any other sensation.

Peter was afraid to move, or breathe, but he could hear the boys arguing. “Dammit, Evan, what are you doing?”

“You’ll thank me later,” Evan said. Peter could hear their footsteps as one dragged the other away. “Too bad we’ll be late for Vector’s class if we stay. I’ve heard the results are something…”

The pressure on his chest was only growing. Peter tried very hard not to breathe. Every time he did, he could feel something shift inside him, like his insides were sloshing around.

_(What did they do to me? How can I fix it?)_

Finally, Peter summoned all his courage, and sat up.

It was a terrible mistake.

Almost as quick as he’d reached a seated position, he was bending back down again, and he was being loudly, nastily sick all over the floor. The feeling of it coming up his throat only made him puke harder. It all felt _wrong_ , somehow, unnatural.

 _(Why does it feel like that in my mouth, like the sick is_ moving _?)_

The corridor was only dimly lit, so Peter could scarcely see the puddle he’d made when he eventually managed to catch his breath and push himself away from the spot where he’d fallen. He was afraid to look closer. There was something about it that made his skin crawl, even in the half-light, and a smell that was starting to turn his stomach again.

_(Toilet. Toilet!)_

There was one the way he’d come. He scrambled to his feet, bolted around the corner, crashed into the thankfully unoccupied loo, and broke open the door of a stall just in time to drop to his knees and issue another horrible spray of bile into the bowl before him.

When it was all over, Peter held onto the edge of the toilet, staring blankly at the puddle of frogs looking up at him from the bottom of the toilet.

Happy birthday to him.

——

When Peter came back in the room, they had a plan.

“I know you’re worried about me,” Peter said, shuffling out of the bathroom, “but I just want to be alone. Okay?”

The blood and pus was gone from his face, but somehow their friend looked even worse than he had before. He was starting to develop a black eye, and since he was just wearing a new set of robes and pyjama bottoms, Remus could see that there were small little bruises dotting Peter’s chest as well. They clashed fiercely with the boils, still glowing along his cheeks.

“We understand,” Remus said. “But we can’t leave you alone, Peter. Whatever happened to you looks really bad. You don’t have to tell us what it was, but you have to let us take you to the hospital wing.”

“No,” Peter said, more vehemently than expected. “I don’t want to go anywhere else tonight. I just want to stay here.”

Alright. That left Plan B.

“Well if you’re going to stay here, then you have to let us help you,” Remus replied. “Madam Pomfrey has tended enough of my wounds that I know a bit of healing magic.”

That was a blatant lie, of course, but he knew the one spell at least and it sounded a lot less confident to say “Let me try this one spell and see if I don’t hurt you worse in the process.”

“Let me try a few things first — maybe even a little Muggle first aid — and then we’ll talk again about whether or not you need to go to the hospital wing. Can we agree on that?”

Peter looked like he was going to argue about that too, but he swallowed hard and nodded once instead.

Perfect.

“Alright, sit down on the bed,” Remus said, taking charge. “Sirius, go in the bathroom and get a towel wet or something. James, at the bottom of my trunk there’s a small blue first aid kit that my mum packed for me, just in case. I’ve never opened it so god knows what’s in there.”

As they moved, Remus sat down next to Peter on the bed.

“I’ve never done this before,” Remus said, “so if I screw it up you _have_ to tell me, and you _have_ to go see Pomfrey. Deal?”

“Only if it’s bad,” Peter said, looking ill. “If it’s bad, I promise.”

Good enough. Remus drew his wand and held it a couple of inches in front of Peter’s face before bringing it down sharply. “ _Episkey!”_

Peter jolted back slightly, an uncertain look flashing across his face. As he watched, some of the nicks and scratches on his face knitted themselves back together, and most of the bruises seemed to fade away too. The black eye was still there, though, and it hadn’t done a thing for any of the boils.

“That felt sort of good,” Peter said, half-smiling. “Not great, but…not bad either.”

“Good,” Remus said, forcing himself to smile. Pomfrey’s healing spell always gave him the sickly feeling of going through three seasons in five seconds, but he wasn’t going to get into that with Peter. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Peter said. “My side doesn’t really hurt, and my headache’s gone.”

“That’s good news,” Remus said. He looked to the side to see Sirius was coming back with the towel. “Sirius, put a Freezing Charm on that — just a little — and give it to Peter to put on his eye. What’ve you got, James?”

“Bandages and who knows what else?” James handed the box over. “Poor Muggles, if this is what their healers’ kit looks like.”

Remus fished through the contents of the box. There was a tiny bottle of antiseptic that might be useful later, but he didn’t know if you could lance a magically-induced pustule. “Okay, let’s save this for now. I think we’re better off trying to make a Cure for Boils.”

“Ugh, Potions, really?”

“James?”

“What?”

“Shut up. Go get your Invisibility Cloak and go with Sirius down to the dungeons.”

James looked puzzled. “It’s way before curfew. Why do I need my cloak?”

“Because,” Remus said, looking at him like he was stupid, “you’re going to steal potions ingredients from Slughorn’s storeroom.”

“Oh, duh,” James laughed. “Okay, sounds good. Do you know what we need to get?”

Remus didn’t, off the top of his head, but Peter interrupted him before he could say so.

“Snake fangs, horned slugs, and porcupine quills,” he said. “You can grab some dried nettles if you think it’s really that bad.”

“We’ll get the nettles,” Sirius said, scribbling it all down on a scrap of parchment. “See you soon, Peter.”

He and James hurried out, talking under their breath as they went.

Remus resealed the door behind them. This was going to be the hard part — the getting Peter to talk part — and he didn’t want to have to worry about Jack or Nabin coming in.

“Okay, Peter,” Remus said, sitting down on the bed next to his friend. “No more lying. You have to tell me what’s been going on.

——

**October 31 - Caroline Green and Ophelia Fancourt**

In the dream, Peter had been running for hours.

He was back in Chiswick. He knew every inch of this street. He’d grown up on it. But it was all foreign now. The houses loomed over him, five stories high. The fences and gates were purple and teal monstrosities, with spikes at their tips. And the sky alternated between a deceptively kind blue and a sickly green-grey.

Whatever was behind him wouldn’t stop coming. He was afraid to see what it was. The only thing worse than running was to know what you were running from.

He saw his house again. It came up every so often, spinning into view. It was like he was the needle of a record player, and the vinyl Chiswick just kept skipping, playing the same bit over and over again.

His mother was leaning out the window, looking at him, wand drawn. Every time he passed, he heard her cast another curse on the _Prophet_ reporters in the yard. She was killing them this time, bolts of lightning charring them into ash.

“No!” Peter shouted. He almost stopped running, but the fear pushed him on.

“Lousy weather we’re having!” she shouted after him. “This is a prison, Peter, not a house!”

There was something new ahead, Peter realized. For the first time, he was running past a little cafe. It looked like an earthquake had hit it — the windows were all blown out, the awning was crooked, half the tables were overturned. At the chairs remaining upright, a group of students just stared at him, sipping their tea.

“You have to help me,” Peter said, panting. “Behind me. There’s a— There’s a—”

“We don’t want to help you,” one of the boys said, setting his tea cup down in mid-air. “Don’t you understand that yet? None of us want to help you.”

“It didn’t have to be like this,” said a girl sitting cross-legged on a table. “If you’d run before, you wouldn’t be running now.”

“Maybe you should have let the Sorting Hat put you where you belonged.” This girl had the voice of Professor Egg, and the face of Daisy Mandel. “Maybe you should have just taken it off and asked to go back home.”

“I can’t go back home. I don’t want to go back home.”

“You can’t escape,” they all said in unison. “Not unless you let it catch you.”

Peter had never considered this possibility. But turning around meant seeing what it was that was chasing him. Truly understanding it.

He had to be brave. Gryffindors were brave, right?

But he knew who was chasing him, didn’t he? It was the man who’d been trying to take him away from Chiswick all his life. He’d asked him to run, and now he was getting his wish, one way or another.

Maybe it was better to let it all be over. To let him catch Peter. He was so tired. So, so tired. And so alone on this impossible road.

His feet slowed, hitting the cobblestones at half-time. He could hear the man behind him catching up. Hear the sound of his breath, gasping out of him as he drew near.

Finally, Peter stopped, gathered all of his courage, and slowly started to turn around.

But the thing behind him wasn’t his father. It wasn’t tall enough yet. It wore black Hogwarts robes with red trim, and its face was cloaked in shadows and it sort of looked like—

“PETER!”

The roaring voice practically knocked Peter out of his four-poster. Through bleary blinking eyes, he saw Remus looking down at him.

“Mate, are you still asleep? I figured I would just meet you in Divination, but I left my Transfiguration homework up here and didn’t want to have to come back later.”

Dimly, Peter began to realize that there was more sun coming in the windows than he expected, and that he and Remus were the only ones in the room.

_(You slept through breakfast, dummy.)_

“Shite,” he swore, peeling himself out of sweaty bedsheets. He had a fragmented memory of the others trying and failing to wake him up for breakfast. “I’m sorry, I overslept. Do you wanna meet me there, or…”

“Not really,” Remus said. “It’s not like Professor Morrigan’s ever said anything important or useful in the first 45 minutes of class.”

Peter let the subtle jab at their Divination professor go and stumbled into the showers with relief. He didn’t like wandering the castle alone if he could help it, not since his birthday. It’d taken a week for the Frog-Vomiting Jinx to properly fade away, since he’d been too embarrassed to tell his friends what was happening. He’d just faked stomach flu, and spent most of the next few days — including a Hogsmeade weekend, because of course it was a Hogsmeade weekend — learning where all the toilets were in the castle. At least if he was with Remus nothing that bad could happen again.

“You didn’t seem that tired when we were leaving Astronomy,” Remus said, once they were walking out of the portrait hole and down the hall toward Divination. “But none of us could wake you. Must have been some dream you were having; you kept muttering nonsense back at us.”

“Yeah, it was,” Peter mumbled. He hadn’t taken any time to pack his bag before they ran out of the common room, so he was trying to stuff one textbook in at a time as they walked.

“Well I’m certainly glad I came back,” Remus said. “I could not _imagine_ a day of Divination by myself. Especially today. You know Morrigan’s been talking all week about ‘the walls of the spirit realm growing thin on All Hallows’ Eve.’”

“Uh huh.” Peter just could not get his stupid Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook to fit right. He was going to have to tell Remus to stop for a second so he could—

With a bang, everything in his bag came shooting back at him. Papers and ink went everywhere, and his copy of _Intermediate Transfiguration_ smacked him in the jaw, knocking him sideways into Remus and sending them both to the ground.

“Jesus Christ, Peter!” Remus shouted. His stuff had spilled everywhere now too, and people around them had stopped to stare. “What the hell was that?”

“I’m sorry,” Peter said, still a little dazed. “I, uh, tripped.”

_(Sure, like when you tripped down a flight of stairs at start of term.)_

Giggles drew his attention further down the hall. There were two girls laughing as they walked away, turning in unison to look back at Peter with a sneer.

They had done something to his bag, Peter realized. And now they were just laughing.

 _(Man, they’re second-years. There’s_ second-years _screwing with you now.)_

“We’re really going to be late now,” Remus said, his tone not particularly distressed. “At least Professor Morrigan will get the opportunity to tell us that she saw our misfortune in her crystal ball. Wish she could have given us a warning yesterday.”

“Me too,” Peter said. The contents of his bag had been spread out in a scattered broken circle. It was like looking at his life, in the form of ink-stains, torn pages and battered textbooks. “Me too.”

——

Trying to pry the truth out of Peter was very much making Remus consider never, ever having children.

“You can’t just sit there pretending you can’t hear me,” Remus said. “I know something’s wrong.”

“Well, obviously,” Peter snarked. “I’m sitting here with a face full of boils and a frozen towel on my eye. I just don’t want to talk about it.”

As much as Remus hated to say it, getting Peter to admit there was a problem, even sarcastically, was progress.

“Peter, I’m not just talking about tonight,” he tried. “You have been off all year now, ever since we got to school. Now I know you’re still dealing with everything that happened with your dad—”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

Red flag.

Remus weighed some pros and cons, and then decided to take a leap of faith. “Why not, Peter? We’ve barely talked about it, and it’s clearly still impacting you…”

“I don’t want it to be,” Peter said. “I wish they would just catch him and kill him. Then maybe people could finally stop talking about it.”

Remus decided to let the “wishing his dad was dead thing” slide for the time being. “So people are still talking about it? I haven’t heard—”

“Of course not,” Peter said. “Nobody does anything if you’re around. Or at least not if they can’t get away with it.”

“Peter, I’m not understanding. What is happening when I’m not around?”

Peter looked like he was going to start crying. “I…I haven’t wanted to tell you. I’ve been hoping it would just stop.”

“Hoping what would stop, Peter?”

——

**November 17 - Oliver Knotts**

“This place is amazing!”

Over the summer, when Bertie was trying to win Peter over, he’d taken him and his mother to a huge sweetshop in Charing Cross. The shelves had gone two or three rows over Peter’s head, and there were jars and baskets full of every candy he could imagine.

Honeydukes put it to shame in the first 15 seconds.

When Peter walked through the door, he was greeted by a wave of light and sound, as students scrambled to grab more candy than he’d seen in his entire life. Up ahead, he could see a pair of fourth-years clamoring up two ladders, reaching for chocolate bars that glowed through their cellophane wrappings like candlelight. Remus was already running ahead to a display in the center of the room, where a fountain was spraying what looked like bright blue snowflakes up into the air to float down onto expectant tongues. And Sirius and James were close behind him, stopping under a sign that read “Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum” and frantically stuffing handfuls into a bag.

“We told you,” James said, looking back with a smile. “It’s almost as good as the Three Broomsticks.”

“It’s better,” Peter said, voice coming out in a hush. “I mean, we haven’t been there yet, but there’s no way it could be better than this.”

“You should hurry if you want some more Nessie’s,” Sirius said, jerking his head toward the back of the store. “There’s a whole crop of Ravenclaws from my Ancient Runes class down there already.”

Peter nodded and hurried through the aisles. Out of all the stuff James, Remus and Sirius had brought back from their first trip to Hogsmeade, Nessie’s Flavor-Changing Taffy had been his favorite.

_(It was almost good enough to forget puking up frogs for a week.)_

Sirius was right about the crowd. There were a half-dozen other students crowded around a bucket painted to look like a mossy lake, with the kelpie mascot hanging above on a wire. He started to walk over, but suddenly recognized two off the Ravenclaws — it was the girls who’d sent him on that wild-goose chase into a supply closet.

_(No Nessie’s for you, it seems.)_

Trying not to draw attention to himself, he wandered away, studying the other shelves without looking back. It wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of other sugary treats to enjoy. The boys had brought back a ton of different sweets when they were here last month, but Peter was realizing that was just a small taste of what was contained within this magical little shop.

Up on a high shelf, he could see something fluffy and orange called Lion’s Breath that looked promising. He started turning his head as he walked, scanning the shelves for a free ladder he might be able to use… and walked directly into another student doing the same thing.

“Bloody hell!” There was a series of sickening crunches, as three packages of Chocolate Cauldrons tipped out of the taller boy’s hands, cracking open. “Watch where you’re going, you little worm.”

“Sorry,” Peter said, instantly dropping to the ground and trying to salvage the mess. “I think a couple of these might not be broken…”

“Whatever.” The Cauldrons disappeared in Peter’s hands; he looked up to see the other boy had drawn his wand and wordlessly Vanished the broken chocolates. He was looking down at Peter oddly. “I know you. Why do I know you?”

_(That hasn’t been a question that’s ended well for me lately.)_

Peter tried to stand up and slip away without saying anything, but the boy grabbed his arm suddenly. “You’re that Pettigrew kid, aren’t you?”

“Lemme go,” Peter said, his mind panicking already.

_(Nothing can happen. You’re in the middle of Honeydukes. There’s people everywhere.)_

But there wasn’t, in truth. Peter and this kid were in an aisle off to themselves, and from the sound of it the crowd had moved up to the front to begin queuing. There was a lot that could happen in the next minute, before anyone noticed anything was wrong.

“I didn’t do anything to you,” Peter tried. “Leave me alone.”

His protests didn’t make the grip on his arm lessen up. “You know where my buddy Jasper Steele is right now because of you?”

_(There it is.)_

“N-no. I, uh…”

“Neither do I,” the boy replied. “Not in Azkaban, which isn’t as good as it sounds, since at least that would mean the Ministry had put him in custody and given him a trial. And not in his parents’ home, where his dad’s been confined by a team of Aurors until they decide what to do with him. That doesn’t leave a lot of great options.”

Peter’s mind was racing. He’d only ever met Jasper Steele in passing, even if you included the time his father had brought him to a Led Zeppelin concert to try and spy on him. But he knew the youngest of Phineas Steele’s children had been the only one to get snared up in the investigation against his father. Which meant he probably had some dealings with the Death Eaters. Who might not be especially pleased about the whole affair finally being revealed to the Ministry.

“I don’t have anything to do with that,” Peter mumbled.

“Like hell you don’t,” the boy said. “I’ve been trying to keep my nose clean to keep my dad happy. Be nice if I could keep it up and just get the truth straight from you, without having to talk to anyone even less enjoyable.”

The puzzle pieces clicked into place.

_(He thinks I’m still in with the Death Eaters somehow. He thinks I can tell him what happened to his friend.)_

“Look, I don’t know what you think, but… I don’t know anything. Not about Jasper, or the Death Eaters, or… I haven’t heard from my dad since July. And my mum’s not involved. I swear.”

The other boy was silent a moment, studying Peter’s expression. And then he let him go roughly, shoving him back a few steps.

“Figures you wouldn’t know anything. Mousy little third-year.”

His face was very sad, suddenly, and Peter started fishing through the pocket of his trousers.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Can I… I don’t know… Buy you some new Chocolate Cauldrons, or something?”

Big mistake. The look Peter was receiving was beyond contemptuous. “Are you joking, Pettigrew? You think a bit of candy can fix this?”

“N-n-no, I just—”

“Hey, Knott!”

Peter spun around with relief at the sound of James’s voice. His friends were there now, Sirius and Remus flanking James like an honor guard.

“Quit screwing with my friend,” James continued, walking closer. “If you’re sore about losing two weeks ago, maybe you should take it up with your captain. Though I hear she’s still pretty pissed about blowing a game where she put the opposing Keeper into the hospital wing overnight, so I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Peter took a step toward the others and kept his mouth shut. If James and the others thought Knott was just taking out his frustrations about a Quidditch game, they didn’t think it had anything to do with him personally.

Knott seemed to have the same idea. As Peter watched, he seemed to roll his shoulders back, taking an athlete’s stance.

“I’ve got better things to do with my time than talk to a bunch of sour babies,” he spat, looking back and forth between the four of them. “Leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone.”

Then Knott stalked back up the aisle, headed back toward the Chocolate Cauldrons.

“Sorry about that,” James said, putting an arm around Peter’s shoulders and protectively pulling him away. “Did he say anything to you before we got there?”

_(Oh, not much. Just that he thinks I got his friend killed by a bunch of Death Eaters.)_

“I dunno,” Peter said, trying to come up with a lie that had just enough truth in it. “I didn’t even realize who it was until you said something, honestly.”

“What a loser,” James said. “Let’s not be like that when we’re seventh-years, okay?”

“Deal,” Peter said.

“Quidditch bravado aside,” Remus said, “we’re just glad nothing happened to you, Peter.”

Peter wasn’t so sure about that. Oliver Knott hadn’t done anything to hurt him directly, but that didn’t change the way his heart plummeted every time he thought of Jasper Steele again.

——

“Peter, you have to believe me,” Remus said. “I had no idea about any of this.”

“I know.” Peter was properly crying now. He’d started sniffling while talking about his birthday, but somewhere between talking about their Hogsmeade visit and telling him about what had happened tonight, he’d started to gently weep. “I didn’t want you to know. I thought you would say I was just a baby.”

Remus grabbed his friend’s shoulder and made him look in his eyes. “You’re not a baby, Peter. None of this is your fault.”

“Today sort of is…”

“No, it’s not. Okay? You have been taunted and harassed for months. It’s a wonder you didn’t snap and try to burn down the castle.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t have done that,” Peter said. “You guys are in the castle.”

Remus didn’t know how to say that it wasn’t really better that the three of them were the only reason Peter hadn’t been driven to arson, but a knock on the door saved him.

“Remus, mate, open up! It’s me and James.”

“Sorry, hang on.” Remus muttered a quick _Alohamora_ , and the door swung open to reveal the other two boys.

“Good thing you sent both of us,” Sirius said as they came in. “James was going to steal his own cauldron, like a dummy who wanted to get caught.”

“I still say we should have taken Snape’s.”

“Mulciber’s is much nicer, and — whoa, Peter, are you okay?”

Peter started crying harder, and James and Sirius both looked at Remus with panicked faces.

“Peter.” Remus bent down to try to catch his friend’s eye again. “I’m going to make the potion. But you have to tell them everything you just told me while I do.”

“Why?”

“Because they deserve to know,” Remus said. “And because until they know, we can’t do anything about it.”

“There’s nothing to do.”

“Yes, there is,” Remus said, feeling a righteous fury bubble up inside of him. “Tell them, Peter. And then… then we’ll figure this out.”

——

**November 30 - Dillon Stafford, Jeremy Elphick, Ivan Nettles, Howell Abbott**

“Remus, stop working on your History essay at the table,” Sirius said. “You’re making me lose my appetite.”

“I doubt such a thing could ever happen,” Remus replied, not even lifting his head up from the parchment in front of him. “Besides, Peter’s working on his.”

“I know,” Sirius said. “But if I can convince you to stop, he’ll give in too so he isn’t the only one being lame.”

_(Cool.)_

Peter bit his lip, trying to focus on the lines in front of him instead of getting involved.

_(“While the true names of the quartet known as the Mercian Marauders are unknown, a number of contemporary scholars including Bathilda Bagshot and Garius Tomkink have dared to suggest the outlander known as ‘Scarlet’ may have been Godric Gryffindor, who was known to be living in the region training with the witch known as…”)_

Remus slammed down his quill, glaring at Sirius and James. “This weekend, on top of this, our 16-inch Herbology essay, and the THREE chapters we need to read for Aelling since we’re almost a full term behind where we’re supposed to be, I need to do 27 different Arithmancy problems, write another essay about the Hierophant for Divination, and read 50 pages of dense prose about Muggle cars, which is ridiculous, SINCE MY MUM IS A MUGGLE.”

“You know,” James said, “you could probably skip that.”

“I probably could, James! I probably could have skipped the whole class. But instead I have homework in six different classes, and would just like to be able to finish the simplest assignment now so it isn’t hanging over my head for the rest of the weekend.”

James and Sirius were silent for a moment, sharing a look.

“Remus…” Sirius finally said. “You know that essay isn’t due until next Friday, right?”

Remus put his head in his hands, lightly screamed, and then scooped up everything in front of him, including a sticky bun, and left.

_(Well that’s not great.)_

“I don’t understand,” Sirius said. “It’s not the full moon, right? I feel like we just had one of those.”

“The next full moon’s not until next weekend,” Peter said. “Don’t either of you write those down?”

“I think I wrote down the first one after after Remus told us last year,” James said. “But then I forgot to do the next one. Or any of the ones since then.”

“I just try and follow his moods,” Sirius replied. “But he’s been barmy all term.”

“Well, somebody’s got to go after him.”

Neither James nor Sirius moved.

_(Really?)_

“Come on,” Peter said. “You guys...”

“I’m eating!” Sirius said. “He’s fine! He’s a little stressed about his schoolwork. Now he’s going off to do his schoolwork. Problem solved.”

“Sirius is right, Peter. Give him a little space.” James was talking with his mouth full, a sure sign that he didn’t think anything was the matter. “Merlin’s beard, we don’t have to be joined at the hip. Remember back at the start of term, when you were the one storming off and needing some time away from the others?”

_(That wasn’t time away from “the others.” That was time away from you, you big snob.)_

“I guess you two can stay here if you like,” Peter said, standing up from the table. “But I’m going to make sure he’s okay.”

James threw his hands up in surrender. “Good for you! Tell him we’re thinking about him and his 18 homework assignments. Remind him we all have busy schedules too. Some of us even have an extracurricular to think about, you know—“

But Peter was already leaving, stomping up the length of the Gryffindor table.

There was probably a little bit of truth to what James was saying. He could be big enough to admit that. The last two years, he had spent an awful lot of time on his own in the Cavern. This year, not only was the Cavern sealed up, he’d been sticking to the boys closer than ever to avoid any more incidents with fellow students. He supposed it was possible they were all smothering each other.

_(They should still be nicer to Remus. And me.)_

Peter stopped in at the library quickly, but it was clearly deserted — only a handful of sixth and seventh-years were there, looking up from heavy textbooks with a glare as Peter passed. That meant Remus was probably just back up in the Gryffindor common room. He had a knack for getting schoolwork done there even when the room was practically vibrating with fun and noise, and with at least three-fourths of their house still eating, he’d have a head-start to get focused.

So he took the stairs in the library up to the fourth floor exit, past the Restricted Section, and headed down toward the History corridor. There was that set of stairs there that went up to the Gryffindor common room, much faster than doubling back to the Grand Staircase.

The hall was practically empty as Peter turned the corner, except for a few boys walking in the opposite direction as him. As usual of late, seeing anyone coming toward him when he was walking alone made his heart start beating a half-step faster. But he just put his head down, trying to be invisible.

It seemed to be working. He could hear their voices coming closer, but the four of them just kept talking. A moment before they passed, Peter’s eyes flicked up just a little, to make sure he wasn’t going to walk into them. And he saw…

_(It’s them again!)_

He couldn’t believe it. Peter hadn’t seen them since the start of term, but the group of boys who were passing him — close enough for him to reach out and grab them, now — were the ones he’d seen in the Entrance Hall on September 1.

The ones he was sure had tripped him, knocked him down the stairs.

He stopped dead on the spot, but none of them seemed to notice. They just kept walking, laughing about some stupid thing, completely unaware of him.

_(What I would do to those bloody bastards…)_

Every instinct in Peter’s body told him to keep walking. The stairwell to the Gryffindor common room was right there, a few steps away. He should go up there and look for Remus and finish writing that History of Magic essay with him. Apologize to James and Sirius when they got back from dinner and have a merry evening listening to music on the wireless and talking about what they were going to do for the holidays. Let them keep going without a word.

But there was something on fire in his chest, he realized. Something that had been burning there for a long time. Since the start of term. Maybe earlier. It was burning him alive and he had just been pretending like nothing was happening, waiting until it burned him all the way up from the inside out.

_(Don’t do this. Don’t do this.)_

“Hey!”

When the four of them turned around, confused smiles on their faces, Peter had turned to look straight at them, wand in hand.

“What—”

“You four are a bunch of arseholes,” Peter said, trying to keep his voice from stuttering. “And I want to know which one of you tripped me at the Start of Term Feast.”

To Peter’s great dismay, they all started laughing.

“Oh, wow, Pettigrew,” said one, a tall boy with dark hair shaved almost to the skin. “God, I haven’t thought about that in weeks.”

“You were saying the dumbest things when they brought you past us on your way to the hospital wing,” said another. “Ivan, what was the one that nearly made me wet myself?”

Ivan started laughing harder, holding his side. “He called Professor O’Brien a beautiful wingless bumblebee,” he managed to gasp. “Then Jeremy and I were making little buzzing noises that whole first week of classes.”

Peter had the very strong suspicion they were not taking this seriously.

“Stop laughing!” he shouted, raising his wand higher. “Which one of you tripped me!”

“I don’t know if I even remember,” the first boy said, looking back and forth among his friends. “It wasn’t me, and Ivan had left his wand in his trunk, so it must have been either you or Dillon, Jeremy.”

“It was Dillon,” Jeremy replied, a thoughtful look on his round face. “I remember because we played Paper, Scissors, Stone, and I lost because… well, because I always lose.”

“Yeah, it was me. Sorry, mate. Looks like you got all fixed up by Pomfrey, though. Don’t have a limp or nothing, do you?”

“Of course I don’t have a limp,” Peter said. “That’s not the point!”

Dillon rolled his eyes. “Look, I said I was sorry. I didn’t think you were gonna go down the stairs or anything.”

“It was pretty funny when he did, though.”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely.”

_(This is getting out of control. They’re just laughing at me. Like they didn’t do anything wrong.)_

“Why would you even do that?” Peter asked. “I didn’t do anything to you.”

“Well, frankly,” Jeremy said, crossing his arms. “We were a little sore with you about your dad.”

_(Of course.)_

“My mum works in the Portkey Office, and her boss was up her arse all summer ‘cause she couldn’t figure out how to track down an unregulated Portkey, and then Howell’s sister had gotten that nasty burn running from a Death Eater attack in March, and Ivan… Ivan, what was your thing again?”

“My dad was making me work odd jobs at the Ministry all summer, remember? I had to clean out those offices after the Aurors were done searching them.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right.”

“Wait…” Peter’s head was spinning, trying to keep everything straight. “That’s it? That’s all my dad ‘did’ to you? You — you were the one who actually tripped me and you didn’t even have anything to be upset about.”

“I guess not,” Dillon said. “I was mostly just glad to have somebody to practice that trick on. Professor Egg taught it to us last year and I was always missing people’s legs. It was sort of a nice note to start the year on.”

That was it. That was the moment before the fire burst out of Peter’s chest.

His wand flicked up, pointing straight at Dillon’s chest. “ _Flipendo!”_

The bang echoed through the hall, and Dillon hurtled backward, dropping a wand Peter had never seen him draw. The other three boys had their mouths opened in shock, too stunned to do anything.

_(Hurry, hurry, before they think—)_

Peter wished he knew the spell they’d used on him; he could have swept all three of them off their feet at once. He opened his mouth to cast another Knockback Jinx—

_“Expelliarmus!”_

Before Peter could blink, he felt his wand slip out of his fingers, soaring away in a burst of scarlet.

_(No! Where did it land maybe I can run to grab it…)_

_“Furnunculus!”_

_“Ploumette!”_

Peter was diving for his wand when the spells hit, knocking him backward down the corridor. He hurt all over even before bouncing off the ground twice. The one spell had pelted him with a barrage of tiny metal pellets, and the other had caused him to break out in a spattering of boils — several of which, adding insult to injury, seemed to have burst, oozing foul-smelling pus.

_(You have to defend yourself. Remember Egg’s class. The simplest tool can be the best.)_

He managed to find his wand, somehow, and spun back to face the other boys, one hand propping him up from behind as he tried to crawl away.

Dillon was still on the ground, but the other three were advancing, Ivan at the front. _“Ploumette!”_ he shouted again, bringing his wand down like a hammer.

But Peter was ready this time. “ _Finite!”_

The pellets vanished in mid-air, turning into a little puffs of smoke.

Ivan smirked. “Cute. _Vermillious!”_

This time, it was a cone of red sparks, but Peter shouted the Counter-Spell again and they vanished. The three of them were taking turns now, one after another, but he was keeping up somehow, nullifying one spell after another as he got closer to the stairs. He had no idea how he was going to climb them if he made it there, but that was a future problem.

“ _Finite!”_ His voice was growing hoarse now. “ _Finite, finite, fin—_ ”

Too late, he saw a copper statue of a robed wizard start to shimmer, right before it took three steps toward him, raising a heavy metal arm.

“No!” Peter spun, trying to point his wand up at the statue, trying to figure out if the General Counter-Spell would work or if he needed something bigger—

It backhanded him before he had the chance to do more than panic. He barely felt himself bounce back, landing on the ground in a pile of limbs.

“Fucking hell, Dillon!” he heard, through the sound of every bell in London ringing at the same time. “We had it under control.”

“You most certainly did not. What, were you just going to wait until he forgot what word to say over and over again?”

“He was getting tired. Hitting him with a statue was bloody overkill.”

“Yeah, Jesus.”

Peter desperately wanted to push himself to his feet and run, but he was afraid to find out whether or not he even could.

“He hit me with that Knockback Jinx so hard I felt my teeth rattle. I was just returning the bloody favor.”

“Forget it. We should go.”

“What about—”

“Leave him.”

“We can’t—”

“He’s fine, he’s not even bleeding… Okay, maybe he is a little bleeding.”

“Seriously, Jeremy, what do you want to do, walk him to the hospital wing and then turn ourselves straight in to Professor Sprout?”

“No, but—”

“Look, we’ll snag a prefect on our way back and tell them we heard a fight, okay? Problem solved.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“Yeah, well that’s too bad, mate, because we’re all leaving.”

They kept fighting until they were out of earshot, but Peter didn’t care. They were out of earshot. He was safe.

His head was still ringing when he pulled himself up to his knees. He reached up to touch a bit of blood dripping from somewhere along his hairline, but brushed against one of the boils on accident, and it burst with a stab of pain and a worse smell. It was all too much. A moment later, he was dousing the feet of the recently-enchanted statue with his dinner.

_(Can’t let that prefect find me. Already done enough. Can’t let anyone else think I’m a rulebreaking garbage Death Eater lover.)_

Peter backed away from the half-digested puddle of sick and looked at the stairs. Three floors. That was all that separated him from the Gryffindor common room.

He had no idea what he was going to do when he reached the top, of course. But how was that any different than any other moment in this miserable life he’d trapped himself in?

——

“Merlin’s pickled portrait,” Sirius gasped, when Peter’s whole story was done.

“Peter, you should have told us,” James said. He was pacing the room like a madman. “At least about Knott. What a bloody—”

“Knott wasn’t even that bad,” Peter said. “None of it was, really.”

“Peter, are you joking?” James shouted. “You’ve been getting jinxed and hexed for the last three months!”

“Honestly, that’s not even all of it,” Peter said, sniffling. “Those are just the ones I remember. There’ve been little things too… But nothing that bad. Even these aren’t really that bad…”

“I think getting jumped four-to-one in a hallway is pretty bad, Peter,” Sirius said.

“But they didn’t jump me, not really. I—”

“I think I’m almost done,” Remus said, taking the cauldron off of the makeshift fire they’d created in the middle of the room and dropping in a pair of quills. “This floor is never going to be the same but I think the potion’ll work.”

“Don’t worry about the floor,” James said. “We’ll nick a rug from somewhere in the castle to cover it, nobody will notice.”

Remus stirred the potion a handful of times, and then waved his wand, watching as the potion changed to a lovely shade of indigo. “It’s done. Sirius, grab me that mug from over there.”

Sirius passed him the cup, and Remus dipped it gingerly into the still-simmering potion. “Not the most distinguished delivery system, but…”

“I’ll take it,” Peter said. Telling his story the second time had calmed him, somehow, and he wiped tears from his face before getting up and taking the mug out of Remus’s hands.

“Careful with that,” Remus said. “It’s still a little warm.”

Peter sipped it at first, then downed the whole batch. “Not bad,” he muttered. “Thought it would taste like dirt, but…”

“You must have done it right,” Sirius said. “Swelling’s already starting to come down.”

“I’m getting sleepy, though,” Peter suddenly said, face looking thoughtful. “I think you might have added a few too many nettles. Professor Slughorn says too many nettles can make you—”

Peter dropping the mug was their only warning, but it was enough for James to leap forward and catch him before he hit the ground. By the time Remus had leapt to his feet, James was already lowering their sleeping friend into bed.

“Did you do that on purpose?” he asked, as they poured the rest of the potion into a phial and crept out of the room. “Make it stronger so he would fall asleep?”

“No,” Remus admitted, “but I would have if I’d remembered that while I was brewing the potion. He definitely could use the rest.”

“Those stories…” Remus had never seen Sirius looking so upset about anything that had happened to Peter. “You were telling us for months that something was wrong with him, Remus. I just thought…”

“I just can’t believe we didn’t know,” James said. “I mean, Merlin knows how many people were bullying him, and—“

“Twelve.”

“What?”

“We know how many people,” Remus said. “He told us about 12 different people who hurt him. Or at least 12 people who hurt him badly enough that he remembered it.”

“Okay, so 12 people were bullying him. So what?”

“I’m just saying…” Remus’s mind was going a mile a minute. “We know who some of them are. It wouldn’t be hard to figure out the other ones.”

“I guess,” James said. “But what good would that do us?”

“That,” Remus said, “is a very good question.”


	8. Any Time at All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys want to get revenge on the kids who've been bullying Peter. Peter tells them not to bother. Then they bother.

“Peter, I’m just saying—”

“Remus, let it be.” Remus could see Peter’s ears growing red with rage, and his friend was looking about anxiously like he was hoping the whole school was about to get up from lunch in unison and go to next period early. “I’ve told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”

Remus did not think not talking about it was a good solution. Not when Peter had been the subject of at least five attacks that they knew of, and one that they’d stopped completely on accident. That was just in the past few months. They needed to do something, or things might get worse after the holidays.

Peter couldn’t be convinced to see it that way. As far as Remus could tell, Peter thought that as long as he put his head down and pushed through, eventually all of this would stop.

The fact that his story had started with getting thrown down a flight of stairs and ended with him getting backhanded by an enchanted statue would seem to put the lie to that argument, but…

“Let’s talk about something else,” Peter said, looking to Sirius and James for support. “Sirius, are you still going home with James for the holidays?”

“Yes, thank Merlin,” Sirius said. “I mean, if your mum and dad will still have me, James.”

“I think they’re more excited that you’re coming back for Christmas than they are about me,” James replied. “Yes, Sirius, you’re still invited.”

That gave Remus an idea. “Peter, you can come stay with me, if you want? I know things are complicated with your mum—”

“She’s told me three times this month already how excited she is to spend the Christmas holidays with me this year,” Peter said, voice thick with disdain. “I don’t think that’s an option, Remus.”

There went that idea. Admittedly, Remus hadn’t been sure his parents would have been too terribly thrilled — there were no full moons over the holidays, and his mother was hinting in her letters to him that they might make a rare visit to Wales to see her dad and sisters — but he couldn’t imagine they’d say no if he asked for Peter to visit either.

“Really, it’s fine,” Peter continued. “Honestly, it’ll be good to get some time away from… you know.”

“Right.” Remus pushed his last bits of pork pie around his plate. He’d been to the Shrieking Shack on Sunday night, and usually two days off his body was still clamoring for protein — but thinking about Peter’s situation had firmly put his appetite to bed. “What if—”

“I’m going up to Divination early,” Peter said, cutting him off as he stood up. “Professor Morrigan said I could take a look at the tarot deck she got from that witch in Istanbul before class if I wanted.”

Remus and James shared a quick look. “Why don’t I come with?” Remus said. “I’ve got to go there anyway, and—”

“Don’t worry.” Peter’s voice was cold and bitter. “I won’t blame you lot if I get ambushed in the hallway again. Plus it’ll give you something new to prattle about at meals.”

Remus thought about getting up to follow him anyway, but Peter looked awfully angry, so he let him go, despite the way his stomach turned into knots about it. The last thing he needed, with his courseload, was to be worrying about somebody else, and yet somehow he couldn’t help himself.

“You’ve got to stop bugging him about this,” Sirius said, head still turned to watch Peter go. “It’s not helping.”

“I frankly don’t see why,” James said. “He was going through all this alone. Now at least we know about it.”

“There shouldn’t be anything to go through,” Remus said. “We need to stop all this in its tracks. And we can’t do that until Peter opens up the rest of the way and tells us who these people are.”

“He’s not going to do that,” James said. “I don’t know why, but he won’t. And I think we just need to wait.”

“I don’t like waiting,” Sirius and Remus said in unison.

James snorted. “Merlin’s ghost,” he muttered, head swinging back and forth. “Sometimes I think you two are the most opposite of all four of us, and then…”

“I’m not going to apologize for being on the same page as Sirius,” Remus snapped. “We can’t wait for this to go away on its own. Either we need to get Peter to open up to us again, or we need to do something else. If either of you have any suggestions for what that is…”

“Let’s go over what we know about these 12 students,” Sirius said. “Maybe there’s something we’re forgetting about.”

Remus went into his bag to find the well-worn bit of parchment he’d scribbled notes on the night Peter had come back beaten and bloody, but a bell cut him off. “Later,” he said, closing the bag back up again. “I’d better get up to Divination and see if anything’s happened to Peter in the last 10 minutes.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” James said.

“I’m not,” Remus replied. “I’m really not.”

——

“Sirius, are you even listening to me?”

Sirius jumped; he hadn’t been. Which was just rude. He was the one who had asked Barry to meet him in Classroom 101B to compare the homework Ash-Karlsen had assigned them, but for the past few minutes he’d just been staring vacantly down at the floor, his thoughts alternating between worry for Peter and curiosity about whether the tiny waves he could see crashing against the Irish coastline on the enchanted floor were hitting the same stretch of coastline in the real world.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “What was the question?”

Barry stared at him, a smile twitching at his lips. “It wasn’t a question. I was reading you my translations and you were supposed to be checking to make sure they lined up with the ones you did.”

“Oh right,” Sirius said, scanning his parchment. “Yeah, looks fine.”

“That’s funny,” Barry said, scooching his cushion a little closer to Sirius to look over his parchment directly. “I had ‘the witch flew over the wizard’ here, but if you say it’s ‘the witch fell over the gizzard’…”

“Shit.” Sirius scribbled out what he’d written and filled in Barry’s suggestion, wishing he hadn’t already used up both bottles of the Erasable Ink he’d brought at the start of term. “Sorry. Do I have any others wrong?”

“No,” Barry said. “Though I wish you had told me that I had “ale” instead of “amulet”; that makes much more sense.”

“I’d rather have the ale,” Sirius said, “even if it is only 8:30.”

Barry rolled up his parchment and turned to look at Sirius directly. “Why don’t we put aside the Runes homework for a minute and you tell me what’s on your mind, since there’s clearly something happening in there?”

“I’m fine — just a little distracted.”

“Sirius.” Barry was still looking right at him, and Sirius couldn’t seem to pull his eyes away from Barry’s steel blue irises. “What is it?”

This close to another boy, there was now something heavily weighing on Sirius’s mind in addition to Peter’s issues. But he had been doing a very, very good job of not thinking about that ever since that day in the Quidditch changing rooms, and he did not want to break that streak.

So he told Barry everything else instead.

“That’s awful!” Barry said, when Sirius was done telling him what had happened to Peter. “And you’re sure some of them were Ravenclaws? I mean, I’ve heard people talking about your friend’s dad in the common room all term, but I didn’t think anything of it.”

“Well, Peter isn’t telling us much about the people who did all these things,” Sirius admitted. “We only know the one guy for sure, Oliver Knott, because he was on the Slytherin Quidditch team playing Gryffindor a few months back.”

Images of the Gryffindor changing room popped into his head uninvited — clouds of steam, boisterous shouting, towels moving back and forth across naked bodies…

“And Remus thinks he might recognize the two girls who broke Peter’s bag if he sees them again, but he hasn’t yet. So all we know is what Peter told us that night while he was still upset. 12 different students, over the course of a few months. Oliver Knott, the two second-year girls, the four Hufflepuff boys who attacked him twice, the other two boys who we know nothing about, and then the three girls who gave him bad directions. I suppose they all could be Hufflepuffs or Slytherins, but…”

Barry had a thoughtful look on his face. “The three girls… What else do you know about them?”

Sirius racked his memory for all the mostly-fruitless conversations he’d had with Peter. “I remember him saying they were third-years. From the way he told us the story, sounded like the three of them were really close — finish each other’s sentence types, you know? I remember it made us think of these three girls in our house but Peter swears there weren’t any Gryffindors who did anything to him.”

Barry was quiet for a moment. “I have a theory,” he finally said. “Do you trust me?”

Of course he did.

They went up to the Runes classroom a few minutes later, and when they arrived, Sirius held back, standing just behind the door, the way Barry had suggested.

“Hey, Otto,” he heard Barry say from inside the classroom. “Did you hear that somebody finally went off on that Pettigrew kid? Apparently that’s the fight Tobias went to break up a few weeks back, the one where he didn’t find anything but a few scuff marks and a statue out of place.”

There was the sound of desks screeching as people turned in to listen.

“Damn, mate, are you serious?”

“Did Pettigrew win or lose?”

“I dunno,” Barry said. “I heard Sirius Black talking about it with one of his other friends after class yesterday but they walked away before I could hear more.”

“Pettigrew’s a tiny thing. If he’d lost, he’d have looked a mess the next day, and I don’t remember—”

“I guess, but can you imagine him winning a fight?”

“Serves him right.”

That last was a girl’s voice finally, and Sirius crept as close to the edge as he dared, hoping against hope that the other Gryffindors would be as late as they usually were.

“My dad’s part of that task force hunting down his father still,” the girl continued. “And my mum hasn’t seen him since before term started. Be a nice Christmas present if Pettigrew would just tell the Ministry where his dad buggered off to so my dad could put him in Azkaban and come home.”

“I thought he didn’t know that,” Barry said.

“Well, sure, that’s what the _Prophet_ said,” the girl continued. “But it’s not like you can trust a word coming out of that rag.”

“You know, Martine and I played a little trick on Pettigrew a few months back.” A different girl’s voice this time. “Remember that time our first year when Charity Burbage was exploring the castle and got herself locked in one of Filch’s cupboards?”

That was all he needed. The conversation stopped dead when Sirius turned the corner and walked into the classroom, but he didn’t give his Ravenclaw classmates a single look. He just went to his seat like normal and took out his books, double-checking the translations he and Barry hadn’t gotten to downstairs.

“Do you think it’s them?” Barry asked under his breath, when he sat down next to Sirius a few minutes later.

That was when he finally looked up at the three girls sitting in the front row, talking again about something Sirius couldn’t hear from this far back. “Yes.”

“That’s great — well, not great, but it’s… Well, you know who they are now.”

“Yep,” Sirius said. “Three out of 12.”

“Now what?”

Sirius hadn’t made it that far. But he had the germ of an idea. “I think,” he said, “I need to do some reading ahead in our textbook.”

He didn’t say anything more to Barry about it, despite the other boy’s determined questioning. And he didn’t tell James or Remus either, though he knew he probably should have. He just kept thinking, his little idea building on itself like a snowball rolling down a hill.

When Friday came, he went down to the Great Hall with the others, stuffed a sandwich in his mouth, and then made some excuse before running off, pretending like he couldn’t feel his friends — and Barry, a table away — staring after him with confused or concerned expressions.

He’d only planned on staking out their classroom, not doing anything yet. It was too risky, and he hadn’t practiced any of the spells he’d learned yet. But when he got up there, the door was completely ajar, and the room was empty, and there wouldn’t be anyone in there until their class…

By the end of it, Sirius admitted to himself that he’d been planning to do this today from the moment he took _Spellman’s Syllabary_ out from the library.

When students began filing into the classroom, Sirius kept his head down, pretending to focus intently on whatever page of his rune dictionary he’d happened to open it to. In reality, he was watching like a hawk to make sure no one sat in Martine Grey, Elizabeth Howell or Abigail Newton’s chairs, trying to figure out how he would tell someone to sit somewhere else if they started to.

He shouldn’t have worried. Their small group always gravitated toward the same seats, and when the three girls came in five minutes before class, nattering away about something or other, their chairs were waiting for them.

It took another 10 minutes or so before Sirius could tell that anything was happening. At the front of the room, Ash-Karlsen was explaining the history and magical properties of the Ingwaz rune. For some reason, he hadn’t started to segue into a personal anecdote yet, so most of Sirius’s classmates were still, listening closely and taking notes.

Not the girls. They were starting to fidget ever so slightly. So slightly Sirius wondered if they hadn’t realized exactly what was happening yet.

He kept watching them out of the corner of his eye, pretending to listen to what Ash-Karlsen was saying. They were shifting a little more now, and quickly glancing back and forth at each other. Next to him, Sirius could see Barry had noticed too, but he didn’t say anything — just gave Sirius a sharp look. Sirius nodded. That was all he dared do.

“In the world of runes,” Ash-Karlsen was saying, “Ingwaz is of critical importance in enchantments. You can see why if you look right at the name of the rune itself — see there, the ‘i-n-g’. It adds momentum and action to a runic phrase the same way it does to a simple action verb in English — think of running; breathing; dueling. When used in concert with the right partner runes and a good bit of spellwork, Ingwaz is the rune that sets everything into motion.”

It was an ironic lecture to be ignoring, Sirius realized, since he already knew the power of Ingwaz. It was the last rune he’d carved onto the bottom of each of these three chairs.

“Yeow!”

Grey’s squeal of pain cut Ash-Karlsen off mid-sentence, and as the entire class looked at her, Howell and Newton started to cry out as well.

“Girls!” Ash-Karlsen’s eyebrows flew up so high, Sirius was afraid they might pop off his face. “If you have a question—“

“Not a question,” Grey muttered. She put her hands on her desk and pushed as if she was going to stand up. She looked very surprised not to be able to.

“I think we need to visit the loo,” Newton mumbled, turning red. She moved to stand as well, but only succeeded in tugging her chair a little toward the door.

Howell was just shouting “ow-ow-ow-ow-ow” over and over.

“We can’t get up,” Grey screamed, bursting into tears. “We’re stuck!”

The classroom burst into sound, students shouting over each other in confusion. Half the class jumped to their feet, afraid they were in the same predicament, and Sirius joined them after a moment’s hesitation, pretending to be as confused as everyone else but never taking his eyes off Grey, Howell and Newton.

At the front of the room, Ash-Karlsen seemed half-paralyzed, trying to understand what was happening. Two of the other girls in the room started crying in counterpoint with Grey. Nabin hurried over to Newton, trying and failing to help her out of the chair. Smoke was starting to billow from under Grey’s arse, and the pitch of her voice kept jumping up half an octave at a time. There was a sudden crash as Howell threw herself to the floor, her smoldering chair still firmly affixed to her body as she tried to crawl toward the door.

From where he was standing, Sirius could see the series of runes he’d carved on the underside of the seat. They were glowing blood-red, and the edges had turned black as soot.

Ash-Karlsen could see them too, and the sight seemed to spur him into action. He bolted to his lectern, picking up a knarled chestnut wand, and drew a runic pattern in the air in front of him. “ _Dagaz Isa Endian!”_

Sirius blinked, and the runes were dark again. There was another series of crashes, as both Grey and Newton collapsed to the ground, and the room went silent except for their sobbing. From where he was standing, Sirius could see that the top of their chairs were charred black. Twin pulses of pride and worry shot up and down his spine at the sight of them.

Ash-Karlsen looked back and forth at the group of them, studying each of their faces. Slowly, he stepped over to Howell’s chair and studied the runes there, wordlessly.

Sirius didn’t dare breathe.

As they watched, Ash-Karlsen took out his wand, and touched it to the Ingwaz rune in the corner. It started to glow — this time a piercing blue.

Sirius didn’t realize until he heard Daisy Mandel gasp that he was emitting the same glow. It was coming from his pocket, where his wand was tucked away.

“If the rest of you girls wouldn’t mind escorting these three young ladies to the hospital wing, I think we’ll consider class dismissed for the day,” Ash-Karlsen said dryly. “Except, of course, for you, Mr. Black.”

——

“How DARE you!”

James somehow managed to grab Peter’s arm before the other boy could hurl himself at a stunned Sirius. Thank Merlin for his Quidditch reflexes.

“Bloody snake guts, Peter, calm down.”

“Don’t you tell me to calm down, Sirius.”

Peter looked like he might bite Sirius if given a chance, so James started to pull him away, closer to the fireplace. “Mate, why don’t we take a minute to let Sirius explain—”

“I don’t want a goddamn explanation,” Peter said, wrenching his arm out of James’s grip. “You had no right to do that, Sirius. No bloody right.”

Remus was now stuck trying to hold Sirius back, and James could see his eyes looking around the common room. “Guys, people are starting to stare…”

“Let ‘em stare,” Sirius said. “For once it would actually be nice to be the subject of gossip. I don’t mind being known for standing up for my friends.”

“You didn’t ‘stand up for your friends,’” Peter spat back. “You hurt a couple of girls as an excuse to show off how smart and talented you are.”

“I hurt a couple of girls who locked you in a supply closet for six hours!”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t convenient that you had a nice excuse for doing it. But I never asked you to hurt anybody!”

“Well maybe you bloody would have if you didn’t hate yourself so much, you stupid prick!”

“Excuse me?!”

James had had enough of this. “Peter, take a walk.”

“Oh come on, you can’t be—”

Neither Sirius nor Peter had thought to take their wands out yet, so James took the risk of getting in between the two of them, facing Peter. “Merlin’s beard, Peter. Take. A. Walk.”

Peter looked back and forth between James’s face and Remus’s over his shoulder, and must have seen the same expression on both. His face grew sulky, but he turned on his heel and stalked out the portrait hole.

“You know,” Sirius started saying from behind James, “I’m getting real sick of him deciding when and where to—”

James didn’t let Sirius finish his sentence. “We are going upstairs,” he said, turning around sharply. “Right now.”

James expected more of a fight from Sirius, but he must have been channeling his mother somehow, because Sirius blanched at the sight of his face and shut up immediately. Without looking at James, Remus, or anyone else, Sirius slunk past them and up the boys’ dormitory steps. He and Remus followed, James giving a clearly eavesdropping Jack Lewis the meanest glare he could muster.

“Let’s start over,” Remus said when they got to their room, all of them sitting cross-legged on Sirius’s bed. “Somewhere in the middle of what you and Peter were screaming at each other, I got that you lit three Ravenclaw girls on fire.”

“I didn’t light them on fire,” Sirius said. “I applied a pair of runic enchantments that would make the chairs heat up _and_ keep them from getting out of the chairs. I didn’t think it was going to get quite that hot, but…”

That seemed like a bit of an understatement. When they’d seen Nabin in History of Magic this afternoon, he’d told them the chairs had burned through to the girls’ knickers.

“And these are the girls who broke Peter’s bag?” James asked.

“No,” Sirius said, “the ones who sent him to that trick stairwell that dropped him into Filch’s storage closet. Honestly, I’m sort of disappointed I had to settle for this, since I would have rather done the same thing to them. They sort of got off easy.”

“Jesus,” Remus muttered, shaking his head.

“I mean, he’s not wrong,” James said. “You and I might have done the same thing.”

“Sure,” Remus replied, “but you or I would have at least talked about what to do with everyone else first.”

Honestly, James wasn’t so sure about that. Sirius had been lucky enough to get a pretty nice window of opportunity. He might have done the same thing, in his position.

“Or at least you could have told Peter about it,” Remus continued. “You know how adamant he’s been about us not going after these other students.”

“That’s exactly why I _didn’t_ go to Peter,” Sirius said. “He would have just told me not to do anything. I wanted to do something.”

This was another point James could not really dispute. It was getting increasingly difficult to be angry with Sirius and it was driving him mad.

“Well, obviously you must have loads of detention,” James said.

“Honestly, not as much as I expected,” Sirius said, looking sort of proud of himself. “I think McGonagall would have had me scrubbing toilets until Easter, but Ash-Karlsen said he thought I deserved some leniency for the exceptional runework. Boy, you would have thought he’d set _her_ chair on fire, she got so upset.”

James couldn’t help but laugh, and Remus joined in a moment later, looking a bit abashed.

“They compromised on detention every night until we leave for the holidays, starting tomorrow. And — this is actually sort of a bummer — McGonagall said she was taking away all of my Hogsmeade privileges. For the rest of the year.”

Remus’s face fell immediately. “Oh no,” he said. “But we were all going to go tomorrow and pick out Christmas presents for each other.”

“I know,” Sirius said. “I guess you all can just, I dunno, buy yourselves something from me. I’ll give you money if you want.”

But a thought had just occurred to James. “Actually,” he said, “I think I have a better solution.”

——

Remus crossed his arms, feeling sick to his stomach. “I cannot believe we’re doing this.”

James stopped tapping on bricks and turned to look back at him. “Remus. You leave the castle through a secret passageway every 28 days.”

“Twenty-nine and a half,” Sirius and Peter halfheartedly said in unison.

“Whatever.”

“That’s different,” Remus said. “I have permission. Madam Pomfrey goes with me. And it’s not to visit, like, _Hogsmeade_ Hogsmeade. It’s to spend a night in a creepy shack-prison where I’m locked up for my own safety.”

“Well, this should prove to be a nice change then,” James said, turning back to the wall. “When we get to the end of the tunnel, you’ll be able to do something more fun than grow fur. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

James had been looking for an excuse to use the secret passageway the Prewetts had told him about ever since they’d gotten back to Hogwarts, but Remus had been dead-set against it from the beginning.

Before, Remus had some pretty solid arguments in his favor: They all had permission to go to Hogsmeade whenever there was a trip; if they went outside of that time, they’d stick out like a sore thumb; it was way less risky just to nip down to the kitchens or sneak into one of the smaller lounges.

Sirius had ruined everything, of course, by getting caught hexing those Ravenclaw girls yesterday. Remus still couldn’t believe their friend had gone and done that without talking to any of them. Honestly, he wouldn’t have even talked Sirius out of it — he was just as sick to his stomach about what they’d done to Peter, and just as impatient with waiting for Peter to realize he couldn’t just wait for everyone in the castle to stop bullying him. But they could have come up with a plan together, at least. Something that would have kept Sirius from getting caught, and losing his Hogsmeade privileges, and finally giving James an excuse for using the Prewetts’ secret tunnel on the first floor hidden between the statues of Charon the Cheery and Irma the Insignificant.

Of course, James had to remember which brick you tapped to open the doorway first, so maybe they weren’t going anywhere.

“James, are you _sure_ this is the right spot?” Sirius had stopped trying to find the entrance altogether now, and was sitting on the floor next to Remus, sulking. “I told you all you should have just gone with the rest of the school. Now you’re not going to be able to go to Hogsmeade either.”

“We’re going to figure it out,” James said. “Peter, don’t come over here. I told you, we’re each going to take half of the wall.”

“I thought you meant the top and bottom half.”

“Merlin’s beard, no, why would I mean that?”

“Well—”

“At least we know it’s probably on that side,” James admitted. “Why don’t you start on the far edge of the wall, and when I finish this row I’ll come over and we’ll find it.”

“You’re wasting your time.”

Remus and the others whipped around quickly at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. There was a tall witch with auburn hair standing a few paces away from them, a drab traveler’s cloak hanging from her shoulders. With her arms crossed over her stomach, she looked equal parts amused and stern.

“We’re not doing anything!” Peter shouted immediately, backing away from the wall. “We just like hanging out in corridors on Saturdays!”

The woman laughed, and the unexpectedness of it somehow calmed Remus. “Yeah, I’ve used that one before. It actually worked on Apollyon Pringle once, but he got sacked the same year so I think his mind was going soft.”

“Who?” Sirius asked.

The identity of Apollyon Pringle wasn’t really the pertinent point, but Remus did not want to get sidetracked trying to explain that to Sirius at the moment.

“I know you,” James said. “You were at Quidditch tryouts. You’re Patricia Rakepick.”

“Guilty as charged.” The witch half-curtseyed, and Remus could see the mockery of it in her eyes. “Would have stayed longer, if Teak had taken my advice and sacked Flume.”

“Nice to meet you,” Remus said, glaring at James. Was there a single red-haired woman he wouldn’t try to flirt with? “We’ll be leaving, I think.”

“Not if you keep on the way you’ve been going,” Rakepick said, walking right past them toward the narrow stretch of grey bricks. “You got some bad intel. You’re supposed to tap the brick three times, not two. That’s why you missed it.”

And to their collective shock, Rakepick reached past James’s face and tapped a single brick in the middle of the wall three times.

On the third tap, the brick started to shift in the wall, moving away from them with a grating sound. As it went, the bricks below it began to move as well, slowly forming a thin opening in the wall and a short brick stairwell that connected to a sloping tunnel, lit by glowing orbs at irregular intervals.

“You’ll want to take this single-file,” Rakepick said, already starting down the steps, “and whoever’s last, shut the door behind you, same way we got in.”

Remus looked back and forth at the others, completely dumbfounded.

“She’s bloody mad,” Sirius whispered.

“Maybe,” James said. “But she knew how to open the door, and she didn’t call for a prefect, so…”

Remus supposed he couldn’t argue with that.

So they went single-file down the tunnel, Remus second in line behind James. When Sirius stepped off the last brick step, they stopped for a moment, and he tapped three times on the brick with the sole of his shoe, sending all the other bricks floating up into formation on the wall.

“This is a heck of a secret passage,” Remus said as they started walking. The corridor was curving gently, spiraling down below the ground floor. “Did the Prewetts tell you where it lets out?”

Remus never heard James’s answer, because the witch laughed again, stopping long enough that they accidentally caught up. “I should have known Fabian and Gideon were the ones to tell you about this. What’d you lot do to get them to spill their secret? I was after them about it for years, but they wouldn’t tell. Had to follow them down here before I figured it out.”

“You knew Fabian and Gideon?” James asked.

“Oh, sure,” Rakepick said. She had a quizzical look on her face, like she’d thought of her own private joke. “Fancied Gideon for a bit, actually, but it would’ve never worked out. Especially not after he got caught trying to follow me into the Forbidden Forest.”

“You’ve been in the Forbidden Forest?!” From behind him, Remus could practically hear Peter’s jaw drop.

“Oh, sure,” Rakepick said. “I mean, I know we all get the lecture every year about how ‘it’s dangerous’ and ‘there are creatures within that will break off your arms and use them as toothpicks,’ but really the only beings in there I’ve actually had trouble with are the bloody centaurs.”

Based on the little he knew about centaurs, Remus was not surprised they and Rakepick didn’t get along.

“So I’m curious,” Rakepick said. “What did you lot get into that got you banned from Hogsmeade trips? I know it wasn’t part of your punishment from the beginning of the year, with the out-of-bounds record player thing.”

“Of course you know about that,” Remus muttered.

“They’re all fine,” Sirius said. “I—”

“You don’t have to tell her,” Peter said.

“I’m not ashamed of it.”

“But—”

“I got back at a couple Ravenclaw girls who pulled a prank on Peter here,” Sirius continued. “But I slightly overdid it. What I really wanted was to use some runes to scare them a little but I accidentally burned their arses off.”

Rakepick laughed. “Oh, that’s good. If I had a Sickle for every time I underrated how much damage I was going to do with some well-placed runes… Well, I wouldn’t have that many Sickle, but certainly more than you’d expect. Good for you, though, standing up for your friend like that.”

“What about you?” James asked. “You must have lost Hogsmeade privileges too?”

“Oh yeah, years ago,” Rakepick said. “Lifetime ban for destroying Slughorn’s entire potions storeroom my third year. Twice.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah, turns out you should not use either Nifflers _or_ Erumpet horns to break in and get the ingredients to make an Invisibility Potion. Turns out a combination of Acid Pops and Exploding Bonbons works much better. Third time’s the charm and all that.”

Remus was starting to think Rakepick might be slightly mad.

“Honestly, I could probably just walk down to the village whenever, since I’m of age, but once you’re in the habit of using secret passageways… Well, old habits die hard. Is this the only one you know?”

James turned to look at Remus, who gave him a tiny shake of the head. There was no way they could tell Rakepick about the passage under the Whomping Willow; there’d be no way to keep her from using it during a full moon.

“Yep,” James said, turning back around. “Just this one.”

“Really?! With you boys finding that secret room by O’Brien’s classroom, I would have thought you’d have come across at least one other one by now. If nothing else, I feel like everyone knows about the tunnel behind the statue of Gregory the Swarmy.”

James looked excited. “That’s on the fifth floor, right?”

“It is,” Rakepick replied, “but you shouldn’t use it. Filch knows about it already, so everyone who’s ever tried to go to Hogsmeade through it has gotten caught on the other end. Same goes for the one on the sixth floor. I got caught there once and it was not a pleasant experience.”

“So you’ve just been running around, doing whatever you want the whole time you’ve been at Hogwarts?” Peter asked.

Rakepick turned on her heel to look back at them and smile. “Yeah,” she said, “pretty much.”

Then she stomped her foot on the ground three times, and the sky opened up above them.

The harsh winter sunlight blinded Remus and the others, but when their vision cleared, they could see Rakepick was starting up a small flight of wooden stairs. They followed her in wary silence, and were surprised to find themselves in a narrow alleyway.

“We’re between Gladrag’s and Scrivenshaft’s, if you’re wondering,” Rakepick said. “Cellar door looks like it’s locked when you close it, but if you tap three times it opens right up again. Nice setup by whoever dug the tunnel.”

“This is fantastic,” Sirius said, looking about him with glee. “McGonagall would be so pissed if she knew I was here.”

“Well, don’t draw attention to yourself and she’ll never know,” Rakepick said, pulling her cloak tighter around her body. “There’s all sorts of mischief you can get into without people finding out about it, if you’re careful. I’ve certainly committed my fair share.”

“Thank you,” Remus said, feeling a bit awkward, “for helping us find the tunnel. And not telling anyone, obviously.”

“I’m just glad to know there’s still students carrying on the tradition of folks like me and the Prewett boys,” she replied. “With the war on, everyone in the castle’s turned into a bunch of goody-two-shoes. Makes me sick. What’s the point of being at Hogwarts if there isn’t a surprise every now and again?”

And as if to punctuate her point, Rakepick suddenly vanished with a soft pop.

“Jesus and Mary,” Remus gasped. He could hear Sirius muttering something considerably coarser beside him. “How the hell — you can’t Apparate on Hogwarts grounds.”

“We’re not on Hogwarts grounds, though.” Sirius said. “She must not have been going to Hogsmeade at all; she just wanted to get out of the castle without anyone knowing she was gone.”

“What a woman,” James breathed. “Where do you think she went?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Remus said. “I need some Butterbeer yesterday. James, give Sirius your Invisibility Cloak and let’s get to the Three Broomsticks.”

This had been a point of contention between the four of them earlier today. James and Sirius had both adamantly argued that there was no need for Sirius to wear the Cloak, that no one would notice he was there — but Remus and Peter had insisted. The other boys were still a little grumpy about it, though Remus suspected James was just jealous that someone else was getting to wear it instead of him.

“Don’t let it drape on the ground,” James said. “You’ll get it dirty.”

“Who cares!” shouted the empty patch of air next to them. “It’s invisible, you prat.”

Mercifully, James only continued arguing with the nothing standing next to him until they got out of the alleyway.

“Want me to nick us a bottle of Firewhiskey?” Sirius whispered as they walked into the Three Broomsticks.

“Why don’t we save that for the next time we’re sneaking you into Hogsmeade?” Remus muttered. “James, go get us a pitcher of Butterbeer and some glasses while we find a seat somewhere in back.”

Remus steered both Sirius and Peter toward the darkest table in the room, nudging Sirius out of the way of chairs he apparently insisted on ignoring.

“That woman was certainly… odd,” Peter said, as the three of them sat down.

“I liked her,” Sirius said, too loudly. Remus glared, and he quieted down. “Well, I did. You have to admit, the average Gryffindor is a little more… self-righteous, for lack of a better word.”

“I think she’s absolutely mad,” Remus said, an idea popping into his mind. “But I think she’s right about one thing, Peter: Sirius didn’t do anything wrong yesterday except not talking to you about it first.”

“How can you say that?” Peter said. “Those girls didn’t do anything to him, and I didn’t ask you to stand up for me.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Sirius countered. “We’re your friends, Peter. I know sometimes we get on each other’s nerves, but that’s how friends work. Or at least that’s what James and Remus keep telling me.”

“Peter, I am not saying that we need to nail a manifesto to the wall in the Great Hall or something,” Remus said, “but I just wish you would tell us who else hurt you so we could talk about it. If you don’t want us to help you do anything about it afterward, that’s fine. But right now we wouldn’t know these people if they walked up to us at this table. That doesn’t sit well with me.”

Peter looked like they’d punched him in the gut. “I’m sorry it doesn’t ‘sit well with you,’ Remus,” he said. “But I still don’t want to talk about it. Can you understand that?”

Remus couldn’t understand it, actually. But then James came back, and made some ridiculous offhand comment about Rosmerta flirting with him, and Peter played along, and the moment to try and convince Peter to change his mind passed.

And Remus didn’t know what to do now.

——

When they got back to the castle, Sirius handed off his wrapped presents to the boys and hurried up to the Ancient Runes classroom on the sixth floor. McGonagall and Ash-Karlsen had decided that he’d be administering Sirius’s detention for the week. As the old man had put it, “I have to sit down and grade essays somewhere, and I may as well have company in case this is the week I drop dead mid-correction.”

“Good, you’re here,” Ash-Karlsen said. He barely looked up as Sirius came into the room. “I’ve left a copy of _The Travels of Wilfred Elphick_ on one of the desks. Please begin copying it down, beginning with Elphick’s preface. We’ll see how much you get through in a week.”

Thrilling.

Sirius noted that the desk the blue-gray tome was sitting on was one of the desks the Ravenclaw girls had been sitting in. The seat was still charred black. He hoped Ash-Karlsen hadn’t noticed his hesitation before sitting down.

Taking quill and ink out of his bag, Sirius flipped the book open. It was written in runes.

So not only was this going to be unbearably boring, he wasn’t even going to know what he was writing down. Cool. Awesome. Very fun.

Was it too late to invent time travel, go back to yesterday, and throw himself down a flight of stairs?

At some point, Sirius’s stomach began growling mournfully, a sure sign that dinner was approaching, but it was another half-hour before Ash-Karlsen finally broke the silence in the room.

“Well, I think that’s enough for today.”

Sirius was so surprised to hear another person speaking, he nearly fell out of his chair.

“You can leave the book on the desk today — we’ll start back up tomorrow. How does 4 pm sound?”

“Great,” Sirius said aloud, before muttering “bloody lovely” under his breath.

He got to his feet, stretched, and exited the classroom without another look back at Ash-Karlsen, intending to head straight for the Great Hall.

It was a good thing he hadn’t turned to look back at his professor as he closed the door behind him. He nearly stepped on Barry Stebbins.

“Merlin’s ghost, Barry!”

“I’m sorry!” Barry scrambled to his feet. He’d been sitting on the floor next to the wall opposite their Runes classroom, Sirius realized, working his way through _A History of Magic_. “You surprised me when you opened the door.”

Barry had surprised him too. Sirius’s heart was thumping so hard he thought it might beat its way right through his chest.

“What are you doing here?” Sirius asked. “Are you meeting with Ash-Karlsen or something?”

“No.” Barry looked down at his feet, scuffing his shoes against the stone floor. “I was… I dunno… waiting for you to get out of detention.”

“Oh.” Something about that made Sirius’s stomach twist in a way that had nothing to do with how hungry he was. “Have you… How long have you been here?”

“Well I was out with some friends in Hogsmeade,” Barry said, “but I came as soon as we got back. You were already inside, so I thought…”

“You were waiting for me? The whole time I was in detention?”

Barry shrugged. His cheeks were bright red. “I felt bad that you were the only one who got in trouble. I told you who those girls were, you know?”

Sirius turned to look back at the door. Still closed. Ash-Karlsen couldn’t hear anything even if he wasn’t half-deaf. But Sirius walked over to Barry anyway, put his hand on his shoulder for an instant, and ushered him down the corridor, a little further away from Classroom 6B.

“You didn’t do anything, Barry,” he said. “You don’t have to punish yourself for something I did.”

“I’m not,” Barry said, biting his lip. “I just, I don’t know… I felt bad that you were here all by yourself.”

Sirius didn’t know what to say to that. But none of his other friends had even suggested being here, and Barry had done it without even being asked. Sirius hadn’t even realized that he should feel lonely, getting in trouble alone and having to serve his punishment alone — but Barry had immediately understood that he would, and showed up to make him feel better.

But maybe Sirius was imagining all that. Maybe Barry just felt guilty, and he would have done this for anybody in this situation. Maybe Sirius wasn’t special.

He felt special, though, which made him feel sick.

He didn’t like wondering if things like a boy waiting for him to get out of detention meant something they clearly didn’t. Something a normal person would never even consider.

He missed being normal. He missed seeing Barry look at him with those stupid blue eyes and not feeling something that repulsed him. He missed not wanting to feel that feeling.

The alarm bells in his head told him that he should just pretend this wasn’t happening. Walk down to the Great Hall and then say goodbye to Barry and sit down next to his friends at the Gryffindor table. Or maybe just make some excuse and head back upstairs, to break into the stash of sweets and pastries he kept on hand for emergencies.

But instead…

“If you were waiting for me to get out of detention the last few hours, you must be hungry,” Sirius said. “Have you found out how to sneak into the kitchens yet?”

“You can sneak into the kitchens?” Barry said. “That’s wicked.”

“It most certainly is,” Sirius replied. “Come on. The house-elves down there love me. We’ll get our pick of what’s for dinner tonight, and you can tell me what you did in Hogsmeade this afternoon.”

Sirius got back to the Gryffindor common room very late that night.

——

“Potter! Wake up!”

One minute James was in his mum’s favorite tea shop, holding court with a mix of crimson mermaids and see-through pixies, the next he was in his four-poster bed, being pummeled in the face with several pillows that should have still been getting drooled on.

“Whazzit? Whazz hap’nin’?”

“Potter, if you don’t get out of bed, I’m going to go through your trunk until I find the blankey your mum gave you and show it to all your mates.”

That was absolutely ridiculous. James had never had a security blanket. And he knew perfectly well that Lordly the Lion was tucked into the corner of his four-poster where he knew he could always reach him if he needed. Which he didn’t. For the record.

But James could hear the sound of his roommates laughing, and he sat up quickly, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. When he opened them, Dorcas was standing right in the middle of the room, holding his last pillow, one eyebrow raised.

“Bloody hell, Dorcas. Stop hitting me.”

“I will when you get up and get ready for practice,” she said. “Just because it’s the last one of the term doesn’t mean Teak won’t have us both running laps if we’re late.”

“Y’r not even supposed to be in here,” James mumbled.

That just got the other boys laughing again.

“Oh, shut up, you lot.”

“Come on, James,” Sirius groaned. He was the only one in the room still trying to sleep, James noted, with his covers still fully over his head. Sirius was always grumpier without at least 8 hours’ rest, and they’d been up late last night after he’d come back from detention. “Put some trousers on and get out of here before I’m all the way awake.”

Sirius’s suggestion was a literal, mortifying one. The castle had been especially warm last night, so when James had crawled into bed last night, he’d shucked off everything but a pair of Y-fronts. Stupid him, assuming that there would be zero girls in the boys’ dormitory when he woke up.

“Uh, Dorcas… I can just meet you down at the pitch.” James said, trying to pull the quilt up over more of his chest without being obvious. “You don’t have to wait for me…”

It didn’t work. Dorcas just laughed and gently tossed the last pillow back on the foot of his bed. “I have two older brothers, Potter. There’s nothing you have that I haven’t seen before.”

James could feel his face getting hot all the way down to his collarbone even before the cheering and wolf whistles (and Sirius’s continued groaning) started.

“Whatever,” he said, shoving the quilt back and trying to look nonchalant as he rummaged through his armoire to find something to wear down to the pitch. He shoved the first pair of joggers he found over his pants, and then pulled on a shirt while he looked for a clean jumper.

As he finished putting on the only jumper he could find — which, unfortunately, was the exact same color grey as the joggers and made him look like an extremely unfashionable ghost — and turned around, he did see that Dorcas had turned away in the end, pretending to look out a window as he finished getting dressed.

But somehow that made him blush _more_.

“Come on,” he said, throwing his Quidditch robes on over his clothes and picking up his wand and glasses from the nightstand, “let’s go and get this over with.”

“You look smashing,” she said with a smile as they left. “Grey on grey is a nice look for you. If you ditch the robe, you’ll blend right in with the fog.”

James chose not to dignify that with a response. He couldn’t help but hear another wave of laughter as he followed Dorcas out of the boys’ dormitory, though.

Normally, James could count on Quidditch to clear his mind. When he was on the pitch, everything else in the world seemed as far away as the blades of glass yards below his broomstick.

Today there was a fuzz in his mind he couldn’t shake off. It wasn’t just sleepiness — not that he wasn’t sleepy. Or grouchy from being woken so rudely. Or hungry.

He had too much on his mind. Too many people, if he was being honest. Patricia Rakepick. Dorcas. Sirius and Peter. Remus too, for good measure. And all those anonymous students who’d been kicking Peter up and down the castle for the last few months. It was like the whole lot of them were shouting and screaming in his mind, arguing over who had the next turn at trying to tap-dance on the crown of his head.

“Potter!”

That was a real shout, James realized. It was coming from Kris Teak, who was watching them fly formations from above.

“Have you been nipping into the bloody eggnog already?”

James squinted in Teak’s direction, trying to keep the low-hanging sun from shining directly in his eyes. It was much too early for eggnog and it seemed stupid of Teak to not realize that. Or that he was only 13.

“No,” James said, slowing to a stop. “Why would you—”

“Too bad,” Teak shouted back. “I could use a slug or two. If I was a little drunk, maybe it might start to look like you were actually executing those Berthan Blitzes properly, like Dorcas and Wilson are.”

“I—”

“Do them again. Better. Or you’ll be doing them on the ground until lunchtime.”

Practice did not improve from there. Teak finally took pity on James and sent him to the showers after he flew straight into a mock Bludger for the third time.

Although, could you call it “taking pity” if the request was phrased in the form: “Potter, get in the changing room or the next place this Bludger is going to go is up your arse”… or was that something else?

James showered quickly, his mind still a million miles away, and then dressed quickly. Breakfast wasn’t over yet, probably. He could go have one of those chocolate marbled croissants he liked, maybe.

Dorcas had other ideas.

The team was coming in when he left the changing room, but as soon as he started to turn and walk toward the castle, she broke away from Teak and the others and ran toward him, grabbing his arm.

“Nope,” she said. “Nice try. You’re coming with me.”

“Finishing the assassination you tried this morning?” James asked, as she pulled him back toward the pitch. “You should try something sharper than pillows if you want to do more than tickle me.”

“Believe me, James, if I wanted to hurt you, you’d be a pincushion by now.”

Dorcas had never called him James before. It was making him very suspicious.

They didn’t exchange any more words until they reached her destination, a small bench on the edge of the pitch. Dorcas practically shoved him down onto it before sitting beside him, legs criss-crossed so she could face him as he looked out at the stands opposite.

“Spill,” she said, without preface. “Something’s on your mind today. That never happens. No offense.”

“You know, I wasn’t going to be offended until you said something.” James pretended to notice a speck on his glasses and took them off, rubbing a lens on his jumper. He was stalling. Dorcas had never really sat and _talked_ to him. It made him nervous.

“James, come on. It’s just you and me, okay? Teak is worried about you.”

She seemed to realize how ridiculous that sounded at the same time as he did, and laughed.

“Okay, maybe he’s just worried about your performance. But I’m actually worried about you. You’ve had bad practices before, we all have, but you’re practically on another planet.”

“You know, I’ve always wondered if you’d have to teach Astronomy different from another planet. You think wizards are ever going to figure out how to get to another planet? I think the Muggles made it to one of them but I don’t remember which—”

Dorcas shoved him hard, and James almost fell off the bench in surprise. He looked over to see her looking at him with an expression that was approximately 35 percent annoyed, 65 percent worried. Maybe 70 percent.

“It is not just today,” Dorcas continued. “You’ve been getting a little shakier every practice for the last week or two. I wasn’t going to say anything to Teak at first, but then it seemed like he was never going to notice. You, me and Wilson are getting too good at covering each other’s weaknesses, almost.”

“Or maybe Teak’s just not that good a coach.”

She laughed. “Well, maybe that too. I think he’s just trying to do everything the way Gideon would have. Or the way he thinks Gideon would have. He’s learning like the rest of us.

“But we’re talking about you,” Dorcas continued, “not Kris Teak. He can take care of himself.”

“And I can’t?”

“I’m not saying that,” Dorcas said. “But I can tell something is happening in that brain of yours. And I know you well enough by now to know if it was something you felt like you could talk about, you’d be talking about it. With me, with your friends, with anyone who’d stand still long enough to listen. You’ve been quieter in the last two weeks. Not silent — you are _never_ silent — but quieter.”

And then, Dorcas gently set her hand on James’s.

So that was weird.

“You don’t have to tell me why if you don’t want to, James. But it seems like you need someone to talk to. And I could be that someone.”

James was having two realizations, practically in parallel.

The first thing was that this was the longest conversation he’d had with someone other than Remus, Sirius or Peter in months. Ever since their fight this summer, James had been doing his best to focus on making sure his friendship with the other three boys was solid, and not really talking to anyone else at school.

Dorcas was the exception. The two of them had been flying side by side for months now, but they weren’t just teammates. You didn’t have inside jokes with someone who was just a teammate. You didn’t fly around the pitch outside of practice whenever you could. You didn’t come into the other person’s room and wake them up and tease them until they finally rolled out of bed, or pull them aside when you were afraid something was wrong with them — not if they were more than a teammate.

James hadn’t been thinking of her as more than that, but that seemed sillier and sillier the more he thought about it. They were friends. All evidence pointed to it. The only person who hadn’t noticed was James. And that meant that he _could_ talk to her about what was going on with Peter. And maybe he should.

The second thing he realized is that Dorcas hadn’t taken her hand off his.

He hadn’t pulled his hand away either. He hadn’t wanted to. Hadn’t even considered it.

Which maybe meant that he was ignoring some additional pieces of evidence regarding their current situation.

“You’re right,” he said, trying to talk and think at the same time. “I’ve been off my game for a little while. But it’s not about me.”

“Tell me what it’s about then,” she said, looking right back at him.

“It’s my friend Peter,” James said. “He’s been dealing with some issues ever since we got back to school. He just told me and the others about them. And I’m still not sure what to do about it.”

He told Dorcas everything.

Well, not quite everything. He left out the bit about his Invisibility Cloak, obviously, and some of the stuff about their fight over the summer and the sneaking into Hogsmeade yesterday.

But everything important.

And when he was done, Dorcas said…

“That’s rough, James. I’m sorry you’re dealing with all that. And Peter too.”

James normally didn’t like people feeling sorry for him. Like, at all. But this felt different. This made his heartbeat accelerate like his Nimbus 1313 taking off.

“Thanks. I guess.”

“I know this is not the same situation,” Dorcas said, “but my first year at Hogwarts, I had a really tough time getting along with the girls in my year. It took me a long time to find people who I clicked with — and I still don’t really have that many friends, you know? Your friend Peter is lucky to have you. All of you.”

“But we can’t do anything to help him,” James said. “He knows who these people are, and he won’t tell us. And he won’t let us try and stand up for him in case this ever happens again.”

“Maybe that’s not what he needs,” she replied. “I mean, I didn’t need someone to come along and tell Angie Trelawney to keep her big mouth shut or they’d shut it for her. I needed friends who didn’t care about anything she said because they agreed that she was a bitch.”

James almost asked what Trelawney had been saying about Dorcas that she was still bitter about three years later, but caught himself just in time.

“It sounds like Peter’s looking for you and your friends to just be in his corner. Give him a place where he can talk about his dad, and how awful everyone’s treating him. Or just, I dunno, do something extra nice for him. I mean, it’s gonna be Christmas, so ’tis the season and all that.”

“I guess that makes sense,” James said.

“What do you all normally do for the holidays? Are you staying at the castle?”

“No, not this year. Peter’s mum wants him to come home, since it’s their first Christmas together since she left.”

The four of them hadn’t really established a proper Christmas tradition, he realized. Last year was a disaster, since they’d gotten in that huge fight with Remus immediately before going home for the holidays. The year before had been during the Warbling Cough outbreak, when they’d all been quarantined in the castle. That was when Peter had originally told him and Sirius about the Cavern. He still remembered that first night — they were all so terribly buzzed on Butterbeer, laughing and joking until long past curfew. He had been sick as a Crup, hacking up bird after bird, but he didn’t really care. They’d had the drinks, and the food, and Peter’s record player —

A brilliant mad thought drifted through his mind.

“Merlin!” he shouted, jumping to his feet.

“What is it?” Dorcas reacted like he’d started on fire spontaneously, and he saw her pull her hand back to her chest suddenly. “Is it something I said?”

“Yes!” James said — but then he saw her face fall. “No, no, not like that. I just — You were talking about Peter, and I realized what we can do. You know, a nice thing we can do for him. I have an idea. Or at least 48 percent of an idea.”

“48 percent isn’t bad,” Dorcas said, standing up slowly and smiling. “I’m glad I could give you slightly less than half of a good idea.”

“I have to go tell Sirius and Remus,” he said, trying to think of where they would be on a Sunday, and if Peter would be with them. “Thank you. This was — Well, I don’t know exactly what this was, except it was great, and it helped. More than I thought it would.”

“I’m glad,” Dorcas said. She seemed on the edge of saying something else, but then she hesitated. James couldn’t remember ever seeing her hesitate. It was unnerving.

They stood there in silence a moment longer, and then Dorcas stepped back a little, out of James’s path.

“I’d better hit the showers then,” she said, tilting her head toward the changing rooms. “I don’t know what your big idea is, but hopefully it sorts out your game over the holiday. Otherwise Teak’ll kick me off the team too for not cleaning up your act.”

James laughed. “Not likely,” he said. “I’ll see you before end of term?”

“If you’re in the library,” Dorcas said. “Professors gave the fourth-years all their Christmas homework a few weeks early. My guess is there’s more to come on top of it.”

“My condolences,” James said, as they started to walk away from the pitch. “Maybe in the common room, at least.”

“Hopefully.”

James gave Dorcas a little wave as they approached the path back to the castle, and she smiled back at him without saying anything. But just as he turned to start running up the walk, he felt her reach out and grab the sleeve of his jumper.

“What?”

As he turned, Dorcas took a step closer, slid her hand down his arm to interlace their fingers, and kissed him.

So he was not imagining that she was into him after all.

The kiss couldn’t have been more than an instant — okay, maybe seven or eight instants — but that was fine. Better than fine. Way better than fine. James’s grin went ear to reddening ear as soon as Dorcas stepped back, and he could see his smile mirrored on her face.

“Write me over the holidays, will you?” she asked.

“Sure,” James said, too dazzled to be properly cool. “Yes. Sure. Yes.”

Dorcas smiled wider, and gave his hand a little squeeze. Then she was off into the changing rooms, leaving James alone on the lawn.

He stood there looking after her dumbly, his brain doing backflips one after another.

And then he remembered his wonderful idea and he was off at a run, headed straight for the castle.

In a lucky stroke, his first guess as to where Remus and Sirius would be was right. They were among a handful of students still in the Great Hall for breakfast, the late-sleeping crowd. Peter was nowhere in sight.

“How was practice?” Remus asked as he sat down next to them.

“Amazing,” James gasped, out of breath.

“You certainly didn’t think that this morning, when you and Dorcas Meadowes were having that pillow fight,” Sirius groused. “You know—”

James interrupted him before he could get going. “So I have two very important pieces of information to share,” he said, “but we can’t get sidetracked by how fantastic Item Number One is because we do not have much time to achieve Item Number Two. Promise?”

Sirius rolled his eyes and stuffed a bit of bacon in his mouth. “I don’t see how we can promise that if we don’t know what either item is, but sure.”

Remus nodded earnestly. James took a deep breath.

“Item Number One is that after practice, Dorcas kissed me.”

Sirius spit out his bacon.

“Mate, are you serious?” Remus gasped. “Was it like a little kiss, or on the cheek, or like snogging, or—”

“I did not see this coming,” Sirius said. “I thought you were still hung up on Evans. And the way you were talking about that seventh-year we met yesterday—”

“Okay thank you yes it was amazing stop talking!”

They stopped talking.

“You have to let me tell you about Item Number Two, okay?”

“Oh god,” Remus said. “Don’t tell me someone else kissed you? That would be so unfair.”

“It’s not about kissing,” James said. “It’s about Christmas, and Peter. Right after this, you and me are going to the library, Remus.”

“Wow,” Sirius said. “That is somehow more surprising than Dorcas Meadowes kissing you.”

“And you,” James said, “need to write a letter to your Uncle Alphard.”

“Well, sure,” Sirius replied. “Alphard’s great. Why, though?”

By the time James finished telling them Item Number Two, all thoughts of first kisses were long gone.

——

Peter knew that even if he kept sitting on his bed, staring at his half-packed trunk, he would eventually still have to get on the Hogwarts Express and go home to his mother and Bertie. But he really, really wished he wouldn’t have to.

The feeling of dread had been steadily building for the last month, ever since the first letter when his mum reminded him “how excited she was to spend Christmas together again”. By now, the last night of term, it was starting to make his stomach churn.

_(You know, if you could get sick enough to require hospital, at least you wouldn’t have to be in the house with them.)_

The worst part of it was that Peter did want to see his mum at the holidays, a little. He wanted to sit on the floor in front of the fireplace and have a cup of hot chocolate and listen alternately to his mother’s favorite Celestina Warbeck album or the strange Muggle holiday jazz his father liked, depending on who’d won the coin toss. He wanted to go to bed too late and wake up too early and spend Christmas Day in an dizzying daze of sugar and presents. He wanted to spend an hour doing nothing but breathing hot breath onto cold window panes and drawing silly pictures and laughing at the silly pictures his mum drew before scribbling them out with the heel of his hand.

Of course, none of that would happen this year. His father was gone, a fugitive, and before he ran away from Peter he’d managed to muck up the only Christmas they spent alone together by committing treason at a rock concert. He might lay on the floor in the sitting room, but all the chairs would be in different places, and his mother had dyed the old rug from cream to emerald the way she’d always wanted, and it would just be Celestina Warbeck, unless Bertie had some records to play too. And he was too old for silly window pictures, no matter who was making them with him.

He wished he could stay here at Hogwarts for the holidays, away from all of that. The Christmas he’d spent here during his first year had been even better than all his childhood memories. After he showed Remus, James, and Sirius the Cavern, they had spent practically the whole two weeks holed up in their new hideaway, cozy and safe and happy.

But Peter had mucked that up himself, of course.

_(Stupid stupid stupid.)_

A sound from the stairs caught Peter’s ear, and when he looked up, James was in the doorway, head turned to shout back down into the common room.

“He’s up here!”

James was hurrying into the dormitory before Peter could even ask what was happening, and he could hear feet running quickly up the staircase behind him.

_(This is it. They’ve decided to give up on you. Leave their baggage behind and start fresh as a trio.)_

“We’re doing presents,” James said. “But don’t go get yours yet.”

“Why? I thought we were doing presents after dinner.”

“We finished early.”

 _(Finished_ what _early?)_

Peter didn’t ask. He just let James drag him up off the bed and into the center of the room, and sat on a lumpy set of pillows as he was ordered to do.

“This is actually perfect,” James said. “We didn’t want to do this in front of other people. I mean, I don’t think it should be a secret, ‘cause it’s pretty goddamn wicked, but—”

“Jesus Christ, James, don’t tell him what it is!”

Remus and Sirius were in the doorway now, carrying in a large squarish object wrapped in a blue fabric that Peter suspected might have been one of the window curtains from their Muggle Studies classroom.

“Is this all the candy you bought at Hogsmeade?” Peter asked as they set it down. “If so, I am going to be sick, and you lot are _way_ richer than I give you credit for.”

“That’s probably true,” Sirius said. “But that’s not what this is.”

“We have the candy too,” James added.

“Okay…” Peter studied the parcel on the floor in front of him. It was about a foot wide on either side, he’d guess, maybe a little more, and only a couple inches high. It hadn’t seemed terribly heavy, the way Remus and Sirius were carrying it, yet they’d set it down gingerly, like they were afraid it might break.

And from one of the corners, where the covering had started to slip, he could see a wooden corner glowing with the telltale shimmer of an enchanted object.

_(What in the name of Merlin and Nimue is this?)_

“This is a bonus present,” James said, before Peter could do anything.

“Because you have had a really, really shitty few months,” Remus added.

“And we know we haven’t always helped in the way you wanted us to,” Sirius said.

“So we just wanted to give you back something that you lost,” James finished. “And I dunno if it’s any good, but… Well, Remus says it’s okay.”

“Better than okay,” Remus said. “I’m kind of impressed with how better than okay it is, actually.”

“Anyway, if you don’t like it, you can beat us over the head with it until we have less brains than Quickley and Dawlish.”

Peter took a deep breath. “That is not the best introduction to a gift.”

“No, it’s not,” James said. “Just open it.”

So Peter did.

_(What… is… this…)_

From the plaque reading “Alastair St. John, Noted Herbologist” and the worn edges, he could tell that the square block of wood at the object’s base had once been the foundation of a bust, perhaps the set of red marble heads that talked back on the third floor.

_(If so, Alastair must be pretty unhappy right now.)_

On top of that, there was a flat golden disc attached that looked suspiciously like it had come from the trophy room, with a thin silver pole hammered through the center. Immediately next to it, there was a quill resting in a little tray the boys had carved out. And as he studied the strange object, he realized that they had also carved strange little runes all along the side of the block of wood.

Peter didn’t know what to say. Literally. He had no idea what this was supposed to be.

“Is this… Did you make me… Art?”

Remus and Sirius both burst into giggles immediately, and James sighed.

“I told you we needed to have the thing or he wouldn’t know what it was,” he said. “Remus, where did you—”

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it.”

Remus broke away from the group and bent down next to his bed, pulling something flat out from underneath.

To Peter’s complete and utter shock, it was a record.

Just a little one — a tiny little 45 — but before Peter could even respond, Remus had slapped it down on the golden plate. As soon as his hand left the record, it began to spin of its own accord, around and around like this strange assemblage was a proper turntable.

Which it was, Peter realized, in the instant Remus picked up the quill and set it into the record’s groove like a phonograph needle.

“I’LL BE YOUR LONG-HAIRED LOVER FROM LIVERPOOL, AND I’LL DO ANYTHING YOU SAY—”

“Merlin’s bones,” Sirius shouted, pulling his wand out. “Why is this bloody veela singing so loud?”

The song had seemed to burst into the room from the moment the quill touched down, emanating out of the makeshift turntable like there were enormous speakers hidden in the base. Peter understood why it had been glowing, now; the others had enchanted the disc to spin, the quill to hover, and the base… The base of the turntable amplified the sound of the record, so you could hear it. So you could listen to it.

His friends had made him a record player, and the first thing they’d played for him was Little Jimmy Osmond. Not even the full group. The baby singer with the Christmas Number One single.

Peter laughed so hard, he didn’t realize he’d started sobbing for a whole minute and a half.

When he finally managed to catch his breath and look up, his friends were looking back and forth at each other, worry plain on their faces.

_(Oh good, you’ve even screwed up the best gift you’ve ever gotten.)_

“He doesn’t like it,” James said suddenly, not looking at Peter. “It was a dumb idea. I shouldn’t have—”

“It wasn’t a dumb idea!” Peter shouted, embarrassed to hear his voice cracking with a horrible mix of emotion and puberty. “It isn’t. It’s not. I love it. I don’t understand why you have a Jimmy Osmond single under your bed, Remus, but…” He trailed off. He could feel another sobbing fit threatening to burst out of his chest.

“My uncle sent it to me,” Sirius said. “Picked it up at a record store in London. He was supposed to send me something Christmassy though, not… whatever this is.”

Peter decided it would be better to explain what a Christmas single was at a later date, when he knew he could laugh without crying.

“So you do like it?” James said. His expression was dreadfully concerned.

“Of course I bloody like it,” Peter said. “You built me a record player. I don’t know how you did it but you built me a goddamn record player for Christmas.”

James’s face lit up like fairy lights. “It wasn’t even that hard once we worked it all out,” he said. “The hardest part was figuring out how to make it spin without having to put a Rotation Charm on every record you wanted to use. Remus was the one who figured out that we should just make the plate spin instead.”

“Well it’s not like the record needs to turn,” Remus said. “What I really wanted to do was get the quill to move in circles but every time we tried that the stupid thing would take flight and stick itself in the ceiling.”

“You really like it?” James said again. “I just— Well, we all know it has been a hard couple of months for you. And it all started with losing the record player your dad sent you. So we thought if you had that back, in some form or another… well, we thought it would help.”

“I know none of us know what you’re going through,” Remus added, “but we just want you to be happy, Peter. You’re our friend — our best friend — and you deserve to be happy.”

Peter couldn’t help it. He was sobbing again, so loudly he almost couldn’t hear Jimmy Osmond’s squeaky little voice.

It didn’t fix anything, he knew. His dad was still an international fugitive. He was still the least-liked person in the whole school who wasn’t Professor Binns. He still had to go home and play “Happy Christmas” with his mum and with Bertie.

But he had this record player, and he had the friends who had made it for him.

He had forgotten that, somehow. Forgotten that James and Remus and Sirius were on his side. He thought he was in this alone, but all three of them had been trying to help in their own way.

Maybe he needed to let them.

“I’ll tell you,” he choked out between sobs.

Nobody responded right away.

“Tell us what?” Remus finally asked, hesitantly.

“Their names,” Peter said, trying to scrub tears out of his eyes. “I know them all. I found out who they all were. Dillon and Jeremy and Ivan and Howell and all the others. The ones who’ve been after me this year. I know who they are. And I’ll tell you who they are. And then…”

 _(Then we’ll give_ them _something to cry about.)_


	9. I'll Cry Instead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys have a mission to accomplish. But planning a series of elaborate revenge pranks isn't as easy as it looks.

“All right,” James said, “who’s first?”

They were up in their dormitory with the door locked, far away from any listening ears, something called _Band on the Run_ blasting out of Peter’s new record player, and he and Remus were holding either end of a roll of parchment across the floorboards to reveal a list of 12 names:

Howell Abbott

Jeremy Elphick

Ophelia Fancourt

Stephen Flynn

Caroline Green

Martine Grey

Elizabeth Howell

Allen Kirkpatrick

Oliver Knotts

Ivan Nettles

Abigail Newton

Dillon Stafford

James thought it was stupid to alphabetize the names. Sirius agreed with him. But it was Peter’s list, and Remus had told them that “when you two have a list of names, you’re allowed to organize it however you want.” They hadn’t really been able to argue with that.

Though they spent 20 minutes giving it their best shot.

Next to each name, the four of them had taken turns writing everything they knew about their fellow students. Peter had the most to contribute, but the other three had each done their part. James could have done more, actually, but the others had stopped him from adding some more-relevant-than-they-thought information about Knotts’s Quidditch record.

“I still say you guys don’t have to do anything about the Ravenclaw third-year girls,” Peter said. “Sirius already got them before the holidays.”

“But we weren’t doing this together before the holidays,” Sirius countered. “I hexed the hell out of their asses all on my own.”

“Exactly,” Remus said. “You hexed the hell out of them. In front of your whole Ancient Runes class. And then you got detention for more than a week and lost all your Hogsmeade privileges. If you so much as sneeze in their direction, McGonagall will have you locked in the dungeons for the rest of term.”

“But—”

“I have to agree with Remus,” James said. “As much as I always regret having to do so.”

“Very funny.”

“They’ve already gotten what’s coming to them,” he continued. “If we do something else to them, we’re no better than they are. We’re just bullies.”

“Fine,” Sirius groaned, picking up a quill from the table. “I’ll cross them off.”

“If it helps,” Peter said, as Sirius drew a line of ink across Martine, Elizabeth and Abigail’s names, “I overheard Grey telling her friends at breakfast on Wednesday that her entire holiday in the Canary Islands was ruined because she was afraid to get a sunburn.”

“That does make me feel better,” Sirius said with a smile. “Thank you, Peter.”

“Let’s focus,” Remus said. “There’s still nine people on this list who deserve our undivided attention.”

“Hear hear,” James said. “I think we should start with Knott.”

“Of course you do,” Remus said. “But we can’t do anything to him until after Slytherin plays Ravenclaw next month.”

James was shocked. This might have been the first time Remus had revealed any knowledge that he knew something about Quidditch.

“That’s exactly _why_ I think we should start with him,” James said. “I was thinking we could kill two Thunderbirds with one arrow. Rough him up like he wanted to do to Peter, and also put Slytherin’s Seeker out of commission for the match.”

Peter was starting to look uncomfortable for some reason. “You know,” he said, “we don’t have to have Knott on this list. It’s not like he actually did anything in Honeydukes.”

“Yeah, because we showed up first,” Sirius said. “Believe me, I’ve lived my whole life around Slytherins. He wasn’t going to buy you a pack of Fizzing Whizbees.”

“We can’t do anything to Knott until after his Quidditch match,” Remus repeated, “for the same reason we’re not doing anything to Martine Grey and her friends. We agreed on this over the holidays. Punishment can’t be worse than the crime. And we’re not going to get caught. When we do go after Knott, he and his friends are going to assume that it has something to do with Quidditch whether or not there’s a game within the month. Slughorn is only going to take the idea seriously if there actually is a match coming up.”

James realized that Remus’s rules had all seemed a lot better in the abstract. This whole project was starting to sound like _work._

Peter took a deep breath. “If we’re going to do this—”

“We’re going to do this,” James said.

“—I think we should start small,” he finished. He pointed at Ophelia Fancourt and Caroline Green’s names. “The second-years. All they did was trip me in the hall. So let’s just trip them back.”

“They did _not_ just trip you,” Remus said. “I was there. It was like your whole bag exploded. Your mother had to send you two brand-new textbooks.”

“I didn’t ask her to do that.”

James could see the merits of Peter’s suggestion, he supposed. During the holidays, he and Sirius had compared notes on the list Peter had given them on the Hogwarts Express and come to the rough conclusion that the students they had to go after could be divided into two groups. A handful were going to be a problem. Knotts might have been one of them. The Hufflepuff boys who had attacked Peter twice now were definitely in that group.

But the rest — Fancourt and Green included — were going to be easy marks, kids they could just jinx when they weren’t looking or set some sort of trap for. If they started with the lot of them, it would be good practice for the ones that might actually be difficult.

“You know what,” James said, “I am willing to admit that I was wrong.”

“There’s a first.”

Sirius was grinning like a loon, and James glared at him for a full 15 seconds before continuing. “Peter’s suggestion makes sense. I say we go for it.”

“Great,” Remus said, rolling up the parchment and stuffing it deep into the bottom of his bag. “Now we just have to learn their routine and find a good place to ambush them.”

“Aren’t we going to talk about what we’re going to do to them?” Sirius asked. “I have a whole bunch of ideas—”

“Why don’t we keep it simple,” Remus interrupted. “Peter, what charm do you think they might have used on you? They’re only second-years, so…”

“It had to be something simple,” Peter finished for him. He trailed off a moment, biting his lip. “My guess,” he finally said, “is a Knockback Jinx. Nothing else would have been that forceful. And I did hear a bang right beforehand, which would make sense.”

“Sounds easy,” James said. “So let’s just track ‘em down and _flipendo_ the hell out of them.”

“One step at a time,” Remus said. “We need to be smart about this. Frankly, it was dumb of those two girls to cast a spell on you right in the halls, when there were so many students about. We need to be more careful than them.”

“Sure, sure, whatever,” James said. There was a tickle in the back of his mind like he’d forgotten something, but he ignored it. “So when do you think we’re going to actually do this thing?”

“Well, we need a week at minimum—“

“A week?!”

“I’m sorry, were you just thinking we could go up and _ask_ them when they’re going to be in a nice place to be jinxed, James?”

“I’ll talk to Barry,” Sirius said, putting a hand up in front of both James and Remus. “He helped us before, remember? And he feels bad about not getting detention for helping me with pranking the other girls.”

Peter snorted. “Are you sure your new friend’s not a Hufflepuff, Sirius?”

“Sod off, Pettigrew.”

“What, I’m just saying—”

“That’s a good idea,” Remus said. “But if he doesn’t want to tell you, back off, okay?”

“He’ll tell me,” Sirius said.

James wondered how Sirius could be quite so certain. He barely knew anything about this Barry Stebbins, but somehow he’d crept into Sirius’s life overnight. It was irritating, almost.

“You know you guys don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Peter said. “It’s fine. Nobody’s said anything to me since we got back. Maybe it’s all blown over.”

“We’ve only been back for a week!” James said.

“And the point isn’t about whether it’s blown over,” Remus said. “It’s about justice. An eye for an eye and all that.”

“Okay, okay,” Peter said. “I just thought I’d say something.”

“Barry won’t be any help with the Hufflepuffs,” Sirius said, “so we should probably start thinking about their schedules too.”

“Well, Dillon Stafford is on the Hufflepuff Quidditch team,” James said, “so if you’re saying we can’t go after Knott until after his game, we should probably—”

James remembered the thing he was forgetting.

“Shit!”

He pushed his chair back and stumbled to his feet, the other three looking up at him in surprise. “Merlin’s moth-eaten mittens!” Sirius shouted. “What on Earth—”

“I just remembered,” James gasped, rushing over to his trunk and pulling out his double-lined Quidditch robes. “I told Dorcas yesterday that I’d meet her on the pitch after dinner. We haven’t practiced since the holidays and Teak has us in the air tomorrow and—“

Understanding spread across the faces of his friends. And then, annoyingly, they began making kissing noises at each other.

“Oh, go to hell,” James said, storming out the door with a bang and hurtling down the spiral stairs. He scarcely noticed the students in the common room reacting to his sudden appearance — he was too busy hurtling through the portrait hole.

He wasn’t sure how to respond to his friends’ allegedly good-natured mockery. Sirius had been bad enough all through the holidays. It took him most of the first week to notice that James was steadily getting letters, even though they’d given Peter the partner to their two-way mirror set and Remus was only writing once a day at most.

James had secretly been waiting for him to ask — he’d been looking forward to bragging about having a girlfriend, even if Dorcas hadn’t said that’s what she was — but he had not anticipated that the congratulations had been significantly outweighed by the subsequent ribbing. And Sirius telling his parents at dinner. And his parents smothering him with questions. And Sirius trying to look over his shoulder at every letter he wrote back to Dorcas. And Sirius trying to make corrections to his letters.

The same thing had happened with Remus and Peter. Sure, they were happy for him. But they seemed to be on the same page as Sirius: great for you, hilarious for us.

Admittedly, being teased about having someone to write letters to was better than not having someone to write letters to at all. But still!

He hadn’t realized how late it had gotten until he opened the entryway doors and stepped out onto the Hogwarts grounds. The pitch was lit up in the distance, but that was the only source of light other than the three-quarters-full moon hanging overhead. As he hurried away from the castle, he looked at his wristwatch. It was at least a half-hour past the end of dinner, probably longer. And there was no one in the air above the pitch as far as he could tell.

There was a non-zero chance he was about to end up back in that not-having-someone-to-write-letters-to category.

To his simultaneous relief and fear, Dorcas was still there when he reached the grass, sitting on one of the benches in front of the pitch. Blake Wilson was there too, talking to Dorcas about something he couldn’t hear.

“You’re late,” she said, as James hurried over to them. “Obviously.”

“I’m sorry,” James panted. He had not expected that he would need to run through the entire castle today, and was definitely going to need a few minutes to catch his breath before getting on a broomstick. “I just — the boys wanted to talk about something right after dinner — totally forgot — hi Wilson — totally forgot.”

“Alright, alright, don’t pass out.” James couldn’t tell if Dorcas was mad at him. In his very limited experience with women, that meant she was mad at him.

“So, Potter… how was your holiday?” Wilson asked. He was clearly trying to defuse the tension of the situation. It was too bad that he wasn’t terribly good at it.

“It was fine,” James said shortly. “Do you still want to practice, or…”

“Oh, Wilson and I have _been_ practicing,” Dorcas said. “We figured we’d get in the air and do a few laps while we waited for you. We did a _lot_ of laps.”

He was dead. Cold in the ground, dead as Merlin.

“Don’t worry,” Wilson said, his head bobbling back and forth between them, confused. “It’s nothing we can’t show you during proper practice tomorrow.”

“That’s good…”

“Wilson,” Dorcas said, “would you mind terribly letting me talk to James alone for a few minutes?”

James had never heard Dorcas ask for something so politely, and from the look on his face, neither had Wilson. He jumped to his feet, gave James a look like she had started cursing him in a foreign tongue, and then gave them both a little wave and scurried off.

Dorcas pulled her knees up to her chest, heels resting on the bench below, and tapped the seat Wilson had just vacated with the flat of her hand.

So James sat down.

“You know, when Wilson invited himself along, I thought I was going to be more irritated about having him around like a gooseberry,” Dorcas said. “But it was nice to have someone to run drills with for the hour you weren’t here.”

“It couldn’t have been—”

“It was an hour,” Dorcas insisted. “Or close enough that it makes no difference.”

“I’m sorry,” James said again. “Like I said, I just forgot. And then I lost track of time.”

“Which is it?” Dorcas asked, her head pivoting to face him. “Either you didn’t remember we made plans literally yesterday, or you just thought you could squeeze in hanging out with the lads without me noticing.”

“Umm… the first one?”

“Merlin’s bones, James.”

“This is a new thing for me,” he protested. “I’ve never had a… a…”

Shit. He had started to say the word that he’d been thinking in his head for three weeks without ever asking Dorcas if that word was an accurate description of herself. His mum had always told him you weren’t supposed to call someone your girlfriend unless she wanted to be, and his dad had always told him you weren’t supposed to ask someone if they wanted to be your girlfriend unless you were sure they wouldn’t say they didn’t. It was _very_ confusing advice.

But somehow his fumbling seemed to melt the anger out of Dorcas’s face. “Girlfriend?”

“I didn’t say girlfriend!” James shouted instinctively, sliding down the bench away from her.

Why had he done that? That was stupid. He was very stupid.

Dorcas laughed. James didn’t think it was directly at him. Or at least not mostly directly.

“It’s fine, James. You can call me your girlfriend.”

James hesitated. This conversation was going suspiciously well.

“Are you sure?”

“Well, yeah,” Dorcas said. “My brothers were calling you my boyfriend the whole time I was home. They must have gotten it out of my mum that I was writing you letters, the big prats. But it started to sound nice after a while.”

“Really?” James found himself grinning wide as a house.

“Uh huh,” Dorcas said. Then she hit him lightly. “So thanks for ruining my tough reputation around the house. I had those two wrapped around my finger and now they think I’m just some dopey, heart-eyed girl.”

“You are a girl, Dorcas.”

“You know what I mean.” She inched a little closer down the bench toward him. “You know I’m still mad at you, even if I am letting you call me your girlfriend.”

“I know.”

James had known nothing of the sort. He was going to need to write an extremely long letter to at least one of his parents tonight for advice. How was he going to decide which one?

“I wouldn’t have even been mad if you had told me you had plans with your friends,” she added. “I mean, we’ve literally got practice tomorrow. I didn’t invite you out to the pitch so we could fly around on our broomsticks.”

James laughed. “You didn’t?”

Dorcas considered that. “Okay. I did want us to do a little bit of practice together. But it wasn’t _just_ about that. I wanted to see you.”

“You’ve seen me all week.”

“Well, sure, in between classes, and at dinner, and in the common room. Where there’s tons of people around. This is our thing. Just you and me.”

“And Blake Wilson.”

She hit him again, at the top of his arm, but her hand trailed down its length afterward. It gave him gooseflesh all over.

“I want us to spend time together, you dunce. You want that too, right?”

“Absolutely,” James said immediately.

“Then start acting like it,” she replied, self-assured again. “And next time we make plans, don’t blow me off. Deal?”

“Deal.”

They lasted out there a little longer before the cold finally drove them in — though James didn’t mind the excuse to be so close to Dorcas as the winter chill picked up. They stayed huddled as close together as they could on the way back to the castle, hands and fingers intertwined despite the ominous feeling of frostbite.

As they were coming through the doorway, Dorcas asked the question James had been worried about all night.

“What were you and your friends even doing tonight anyway?”

James froze. He couldn’t tell her that. Dorcas didn’t know Peter from Adam, not really. She was sad for him when James brought him up, but she wouldn’t understand why he and the others had to stick up for him. It would be a problem. Maybe even a fight. He didn’t want another fight.

“It was dumb,” he lied. “Me and the other boys helped build this thing for Peter that plays Muggle records, but we haven’t found a good place for him to use it outside of the dorms. So we were just out trying to find a new spot. It’s hard to just hang out when you’re sitting on each other’s beds, you know?”

“Ugh, tell me about it,” Dorcas said, and he knew from the tone of her voice that he’d pulled it off. “At least you like the people you share a room with. The other fourth-year girls… well, you probably know, a little bit. We’re not each other’s biggest fans. Why don’t you try looking around for a spare corner of the dungeons? Acoustics down there are probably wicked.”

“I’ll have to suggest it,” James said. “If we find a good place, maybe I can can invite you down there sometime? Either with the boys, or… you know…”

Dorcas smiled, and lifted his hand to her lips to give it a kiss. “It’s a date.”

——

“Ow!” James tried to keep his shout down to a whisper, but that was the _third time_ Peter had stepped on his toes.

“Sorry,” the other boy muttered. If they hadn’t been under James’s Invisibility Cloak, he’d surely be pacing, but instead he was just fidgeting. Fidgeting right onto James’s feet.

“Thank Merlin we agreed to let Sirius sleep in,” he muttered. “This cloak is clearly designed for one.”

They were huddled together under his cloak, pressed up against one of the curving walls of the Serpentine Corridor. The hall had been empty for most of the past 30 minutes, and the only interesting thing that had happened was the Grey Lady sailing through one wall and into the other, tears seeming to glisten on her ethereal face.

“I’m sorry,” Peter muttered.

“Whatever.” James looked at his watch. “We only have a few more minutes before their class lets out.”

James could understand Peter’s impatience. It had been more than two weeks since they’d first discussed The Plan. Not due to any lack of information, mind you. Barry had been good as Sirius’s word, getting them an approximation of Green and Fancourt’s class schedules before the weekend was out.

But then Remus had insisted that they study the girls’ routines first. That meant long hours under the Invisibility Cloak, following them around — or worse, long hours with one of the other boys wearing his Invisibility Cloak, following them around. Remus had initially settled on Saturday evening as the best window, but James had put his foot down. If they were going to use his Invisibility Cloak, he was going to be the one wearing it, and he wasn’t skipping out on Quidditch practice when getting them in between Transfiguration and Charms on Tuesday morning was just as good.

He was regretting that now, of course.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he told Peter. “We’ve watched them walk this route twice now. They always come up to the third floor using the stairs by McGonagall’s office, and take this hall down to the Charms corridor.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Peter said. “I’m worried we’ll get caught.”

“How?” James almost shouted. “We’re invisible!”

“But not inaudible,” Peter whispered, panic just visible in his eyes despite the shadow cast by the cloak across his face.

James opened his mouth to remind Peter that they were presently _alone_ in the hallway, but the school bells cut him off.

“Alright,” he said, holding his wand at the side. “Here we go.”

It was all students they didn’t know, at first. Ickle firsties still worried they’d be late to class five months in, gaggles of sixth- and seventh-year girls gossiping about this boy or that.

Then Peter nudged his shoulder. “There they are.”

James saw the girls immediately. Fancourt was the short one, with a red bob that made her face look all the paler by contrast. Green was taller, perhaps as tall as James himself, though he suspected she might outweigh him by a stone and a half. He couldn’t hear what they were saying from this far down the hall, but as usual Fancourt was doing most of the talking, with Green just nodding her head up and down at regular intervals.

“Perfect,” James whispered, raising his arm under the cloak. “When they get a little closer, I’ll—”

He stopped. His wandtip was moving along the edge of the Invisibility Cloak, the fabric flush against the tip.

“Say… we didn’t check to to see if a Knockback Jinx could go through the cloak, did we?”

“I know I didn’t,” Peter said. His voice had gotten a little wavery. “It probably does. Right?”

“Well, I certainly don’t want to find out it doesn’t through trial and error.” James thought for a moment, then started to shift the cloak to let his arm free. “Maybe I can just stick it out…”

“No!” Peter hissed, reaching over and pulling James’s arm down. “They’ll see it.”

“They’ll see both of us if you keep squirming around!” James tried to wriggle out of Peter’s grasp. “Lemme go!”

“James, seriously—”

Students passing by were starting to look confused, looking around for the source of the invisible scuffle Luckily, the Serpentine Corridor was especially echoey — the only person James could see who he thought might have actually looked their way was Professor Aelling, but only for a second before they went back to explaining something about Greek to a fifth-year boy with a prefect’s badge. But that wouldn’t last forever.

“Peter, stop it!” he whispered. “We’re going to miss them!”

The two Ravenclaw girls were almost directly opposite them now. James could hear Green finally getting a word in edgewise, saying something about how “Transfiguration wouldn’t be so bad if McGonagall spent more time on formulas.”

“Duck down,” Peter said.

“What?”

“If you’re going to stick your arm out, we have to get low to the ground. Then no one will see.”

James thought the logic of that was a little faulty, but they didn’t have much time to argue. Fancourt and Green were past them now, veering out of the path of Lily Evans and Trix Bellicose as they walked by. James only had about 30 seconds, maybe less.

“Fine.” James dropped into a crouch so fast that the cloak started to ride up Peter’s left side. The other boy let out a squeak of surprise, then went down to his knees with a clunk.

“Not so loud!”

“Sorry, sorry!”

James looked down the corridor. It was now or never. And he didn’t want to wait another week for this.

With his left hand, he bunched up the cloak, studied the girl’s bags through the fibers in front of his eyes, and then darted his right arm just past the lip of the cloak. “ _Flipendo!”_

He knew he’d screwed it up even before he finished the word.

The corridor curved, of course, being the Serpentine Corridor and all, and so as they were walking Caroline Green and Ophelia Fancourt were shifting ever so slightly out of line with him and Peter. That wouldn’t have been so bad, of course, if he’d just miscalculated a little. Their goal was to hit one of the large bags at their hips, but James would have considered it a win even if he’d just brained one of them on the back of the skull.

But no, this wasn’t just a miscalculation; it was a miss, full stop.

The streak of blueish-white magic flew straight past both the girls and their bags, though it seemed to make their robes ripple as it went past. James watched it arc straight into the wall, hoping and praying it would just leave a dent, or explode, or something.

Instead it bounced, repelled by the smoothness of the bricks. This corridor was rounded all the way up, like a tunnel, so it bounced toward the ceiling, then off that down toward the ground, then off that back the way it came.

The screaming started right around the third bounce or so.

James was glad he and Peter were already halfway to the ground, because it saved them the trouble of having to duck — unlike the rest of their classmates, who were dropping like Voldemort himself had come to visit. Peter was cowering next to him with his hands over his head but James couldn’t help but watch the jinx ricochet back and forth and all around the corridor.

“What is all this screaming about?”

Professor Aelling had come running back, James saw, and as he looked over at their Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, he realized in horror exactly what was about to happen.

The jinx hit the ceiling again, dropped to the floor, and popped right back up at the professor, slamming into their chest.

There was a loud bang, and Professor Aelling flew so high James thought their head might crack into the top of the corridor. Luckily or unluckily, they crashed into a pair of students who were scattering in the wrong direction, and the three of them crumpled to the ground in a heap.

From a distance, they all looked like they were moving. But James did not want to get closer to find out.

Peter quivered next to him, hyperventilating. “Fu-f-f-fu—”

“Peter, shut up.”

Every student in the hall, including them, was looking at Aelling, and a couple of the older ones had gotten up and started to run over toward them. The prefect they’d been talking to seemed too stunned to take charge of the situation. But that wouldn’t last long.

They had a tiny window to escape. And they were about to miss it.

“Peter,” James whispered, acutely aware of the silence that was hanging over the hallway. “In a minute, I’m going to take the cloak off.”

“What?!”

“We can’t wait this out,” he said. “Half the staff of Hogwarts is about to show up in this hallway, and if we wait for them to leave I’ll miss Care of Magical Creatures. Without an alibi.”

“But—”

“I’m going to pull it off as soon as I’m sure no one’s paying attention to us.” More students were getting to their feet, looking around the hall, and there was a nervous chatter starting from around Professor Aelling. “Follow my lead.”

“James, I—”

James wasn’t listening. He had the center of the cloak balled up in his fist, watching, watching, watching…

Now!

He pulled the Invisibility Cloak with both hands as hard as he could, stuffing it under his huddled body, and frantically looked around the corridor.

As far as he could tell, not a single person had noticed that there were two more cowering students than there’d been a few moments before.

Perfect. Now for the part Peter _really_ wasn’t going to like.

James sprang to his feet, no longer concerned about making noise. “Is Professor Aelling okay?” he shouted.

On the ground next to him, Peter squeaked like a popped balloon.

James’s shout seemed to galvanize the prefect who’d been walking with the professor. “I-I think so,” he said. He started wiping the panic sweat off of his forehead. “I think they’re all fine.”

“I’ll go get help from Madam Pomfrey,” James said, loudly enough that everyone could hear him. “C’mon, Peter, get up.”

James bent down quickly to shove the cloak into his bag, tugging on Peter’s arm as he stood back up. His friend was dead weight, shaking like a leaf.

“We’ll get Professor O’Brien,” Trix Bellicose said. She and Lily were among the students who’d gone over to Aelling right away, and the latter was still crouched down next to him and the students, briefly touching her fingers to each of their necks. “Lily, are you coming?”

Lily just nodded. She seemed to have convinced herself that Aelling and the students he’d run into were going to be fine, and got to her feet. “Don’t let them get up if they come out of it,” she told the prefect. “That boy’s got a real bump on his head. Nothing Pomfrey can’t fix but…”

“I won’t,” the prefect said. “Did anyone see what happened?”

A chorus of hesitant no’s echoed through the hall. James could see some of the students around them starting to shuffle away, including Fancourt and Green. That was good. The less people who were here when they got back, the better.

“We’ll send Pomfrey back soon,” James said over his shoulder, pulling Peter along with him.

“Hurry back,” the prefect shouted after them.

Not bloody likely.

“Have you lost your head?” Peter whispered, as soon as they reached the stairs heading down to the ground floor. “What was that all about?”

“I told you,” James said. “We needed to get out of there before anyone else showed up. That way none of the other professors know we were even there.”

“So we’re going to get Madam Pomfrey? How is that going to—”

“Oh, thanks for reminding me.”

He ran a few steps ahead of Peter, toward a group of first-years coming up the stairs.

“Did you hear?” he said quickly, trying to look panicky. “Someone jinxed Professor Aelling in the Serpentine Corridor.”

A girl in the group gasped, and the others looked at each other with concern. “We didn’t,” one of them said. “Just now?”

“Yeah,” James said. “Can you run and get Pomfrey? A prefect sent me and my friend to get her and Dumbledore, but we don’t want to split up… in case whoever jinxed the professor is still out there.”

They all seemed to fall to pieces at that suggestion, but all it took was a reminder that the safest place to be attacked was the hospital wing and they were off at a dead run, almost tripping over their robes. It was almost comical.

Peter hurried up to him as soon as they were gone. “Now you want to go to Dumbledore?”

James turned around and looked at Peter like he was the mad one. Couldn’t he figure out what was going on? “Of course not, Peter. I’m going to Care of Magical Creatures.”

“What?”

“There’s nothing else to do,” he said. “We need to stay as far out of this situation as we can, so nobody asks any questions about what we were doing in that hallway. You may have noticed that stopping on the third floor is a bit of a detour when you’re trying to go from the Gryffindor common room to the Hogwarts grounds.”

“You really don’t think anyone is going to be suspicious that we’re not the ones who bring Pomfrey back?”

“No, I don’t.” That was only about 85% true, but he wasn’t telling Peter that. “But if you feel differently, feel free to follow the first-years. But remember, when you get back they’re going to want to talk to every single student who’s still there about what happened. And you don’t really have a good answer.”

James watched Peter consider his options, confusion and frustration plain on his face.

“I guess that makes sense,” he finally said. “But now what? We accidentally attacked a professor. That’s, like… 300 weeks of detention.”

“Only if we get caught,” James said, starting down the stairs. “So let’s see if we can at least make it to lunch, okay?”

He didn’t wait to hear Peter’s response.

——

“I can’t believe you screwed this up.”

James had never seen what Remus was like when he was in charge of anything besides homework, and he wasn’t liking it. The infamous Hogwarts gossip mill had already reached him by the time he and Peter got to Charms, and he’d given them the silent treatment for the rest of the day until now.

In retrospect, James liked the silent treatment better.

“If you weren’t going to perform a simple Knockback Jinx correctly, you could have at least hit someone other than a goddamn professor,” Remus continued, his voice a mean hush that James could only barely hear over the other dinner conversations in the Great Hall.

“It’s not like I meant to do it, Remus.”

“Well, still.”

Professor Aelling’s chair was notably empty at the head table. That wasn’t terribly abnormal — Aelling usually skipped dinner — but it stood out tonight. Students kept looking up at the head table, then turning away quickly as soon as one of the other teachers seemed to notice them.

“No one knows what actually happened,” James said. “We’re fine.”

Remus didn’t show any sign of hearing him. “We’re going to have to go back to the drawing board. It’s too risky to try and get Green and Fancourt in the same spot that Aelling got ambushed.”

“If it helps,” Sirius interjected, “the leading theory is that some witch Aelling spurned back in Greece snuck into the castle and jinxed them.”

“How would someone sneak into Hogwarts without getting caught?” Peter asked.

James couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Peter. _We’ve_ snuck in and out of Hogwarts without being caught before.”

“Oh yeah.”

“I’m going to have to borrow your cloak,” Remus said, pulling out a heavily scribbled-over timetable. “We still haven’t nailed down where the girls spend their free period on Friday mornings. Probably can’t get out of Transfiguration without McGonagall being suspicious, but I could fake sick at the start of Charms and see if O’Brien would let me go to the hospital wing, so I could follow them out of Defense Against the Dark Arts. Of course, then he might talk to Pomfrey—”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” James said. “You are overthinking this, Remus. Extremely overthinking this. And frankly, my Invisibility Cloak has not made any of this easier. It’s for sneaking around at night, not ambushing unsuspecting students.”

“Well, the girls never seem to break curfew,” Remus countered, “so if you have an idea for how to get them out and about in the evenings…”

Remus was clearly not going to listen to a single thing James said, at this point. It was going to take action to get him to see reason.

So James took his wand out of his bag, stuffing it up his sleeve most of the way to hide it from view, and took stock of where Caroline Green and Ophelia Fancourt were sitting, just one table over. “I’d say ‘don’t freak out,’ but that would sort of defeat the purpose of this.”

Remus’s eyebrow twitched. “The purpose of what?”

James’s first thought had been of how Sirius had sparked chaos at his cousin’s wedding, with a flurry of birds. But he didn’t have time to cast enough Avifors spells to truly disrupt the entire Great Hall before a professor noticed and shut him down.

He had something else in mind. He’d never tried it before — McGonagall had pointedly skipped straight from Lapifors to Terrafors in her curriculum, even though she surely knew it was a spell every Slytherin knew how to cast by the end of first year anyway.

“ _Serpifors,”_ he muttered, pointing his wand directly at Remus’s plate.

It took Remus a moment to realize what was sloughing bits of cottage pie off of its scales as it began to uncoil itself.

Then he bolted backward and screamed. Very convincingly.

“Jesus-God-SNAKE!”

James tumbled away from the table, trying to look as surprised and terrified as all the other Gryffindors around him. But his eyes darted across the room to the other tables. Slytherins wouldn’t do of course, but there was a long scarf draped over a bench at the Hufflepuff table, and he could always try a plate again for the Ravenclaws…

Two mutterings later, and there were more snakes and more screams. Over the sound of chairs and benches scraping back, he could hear Dumbledore’s voice: “What is the meaning of all this?”

No time left. He’d intentionally transfigured a plate further away from Fancourt and Green, in the hopes they would stay in their seats and try to understand the situation from there. So far, mostly good — Fancourt was standing up, trying to get a better view, but that wouldn’t help her.

His wand still just-barely poking out of his robes, James pointed his arm in the girls’ direction, took a half-second to get his aim just right, and said “ _Flipendo!”_

It was an incredibly brazen move, he realized. Anyone could be looking at him, or catch a glimpse of the blue-white streak.

But his snakes had done their job well, and James heard no outcry in the three seconds before his spell hit a full pitcher of pumpkin juice with a bang.

It seemed to explode, almost, with a cascade of orange spray that immediately drenched both girls. They were too surprised to even scream, though James caught a bit of a squeak from Fancourt as she fell back, tripping over her bench, to sprawl on the floor.

Perfect.

“STUDENTS, PLEASE BE SEATED.”

Dumbledore’s voice, magically amplified, shook the walls of the Great Hall, and made James’s molars tingle in harmony. He looked away from the Ravenclaws to see a tremendously angry McGonagall stalking between tables, and the golden serpent he’d transfigured on their table shifting back into a golden plate.

James obeyed, quickly, trying not to look guilty. The way Remus was glaring at him didn’t help with that.

“You foolhardy, self-absorbed—”

“Shut up,” James hissed. “I did it, didn’t I?”

He and Sirius turned their heads to look. Green was sobbing into her custard, and a prefect was helping a dripping Fancourt back to her feet.

“Bloody hell,” Sirius breathed.

“Who is responsible for this mischief?” McGonagall said. She was standing on their end of the hall now, arms ramrod-stiff at her sides, glaring down one table after another. “Be well advised, your punishment will be _significantly_ increased if you do not turn yourself in.”

McGonagall’s voice sent his stomach plummeting. The thrill of the moment was wearing off quickly, replaced by a slimy feeling of dread. He’d been so irritated with Remus that he’d gone too far, too fast, with no cover. Anyone could have seen him transfigure those snakes, and he’d been even more brazen with his Knockback Jinx.

But he said nothing. He just looked around and around the room. Everyone else just seemed to be nervously whispering. The Slytherins were uncharacteristically quiet — James was glad at least some of them were smart enough to know that his use of snakes had been meant to frame them. McGonagall didn’t seem focused on them, though. He suspected it wasn’t the first time someone from a different house had tried exactly the same trick as him.

Oddly, a few seats down from them, Lily Evans was silently staring at her plate, ignoring whatever Trix Bellicose was whispering rapid-fire into her ear. Could she have seen—

“Professor?”

James whipped his head around to stare at Peter, who’d gotten to his feet and was looking straight at the deputy headmistress.

“I know what happened, Professor McGonagall.”

“Really?” McGonagall took three steps toward them, seeming to grow more wrathful with each step. “Tell me, Mr. Pettigrew.”

Peter wasn’t going to tell McGonagall, right? He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

But James didn’t like the way his friend was quivering with terror.

There was a long pause, and James almost screamed out his own confession in panic.

“It was Evan Rosier,” Peter said, pointing across the way. “I saw him gesturing with his wand, and then all of a sudden there was a snake right here on our table.”

James could have fainted with relief.

The Slytherin table erupted in outrage. Several students were standing and screaming at McGonagall, though James realized Rosier was notably not one of them. He was just sitting there, hands folded, eyes venomous.

McGonagall pointed her wand straight up, and it whistled, high and fierce. The Slytherins stoped shouting.

“Are you certain, Pettigrew?”

“N-not 100 percent,” Peter stammered. “But I’m pretty sure. Yeah.”

James watched her evaluate him. He’d been in the room for her interrogation of Peter at the end of last term — not that she or Peter knew that — and he would guess their Transfiguration professor thought she had a good read on him.

Which probably meant they were all about to get detention.

But somehow, Peter had convinced her. “Rosier, come with me. Just you.”

The Great Hall was completely silent until they left. Then it was louder than ever.

“Merlin’s woolly mittens,” Sirius said. “That was brilliant, Peter. _You_ were brilliant.”

“Thanks, I think.” Peter’s terror seemed to have sparked his appetite; his friend had shoveled three pumpkin pasties onto his plate. “I just— I sort of did the same thing as James this morning. Deflect attention.”

“Well, it worked,” James said. “Hell, you were even better than me. Rosier? Brilliant choice. He’ll probably confess just to curry favor with his Death Eater chums.”

Remus wasn’t sharing in the celebration. “We got really lucky here,” he said. “Someone else could have seen you jinx the girls, or transfigure that snake—”

“‘But Professor McGonagall,’” James said, hand to his chest in mock astonishment, “‘you can’t seriously be suggesting I would endanger the life of my very good friend, Remus Lupin, by transfiguring a snake to drop right into his lap?’ See? Easy out.”

“He’s got you there, Remus,” Sirius said. “Let it go. I promise, next time we’ll talk about it first.”

“Fine,” Remus said, sulking.

And that should have been the end of it.

But later that night, at the top of the Astronomy Tower, James heard the scrape of a telescope leg, as someone moved closer to him in the dark.

“What the bloody hell are you up to, Potter?”

It was goddamn Lily Evans.

“You’ve had a busy day,” she whispered. “Stunning professors, serving up snakes for dinner—”

“Shut up, Evans.” James whirled his head around, but Professor Sargas was on the other side of the parapet, explaining to Helena Quickley that the “new planet” she had discovered was a speck of dust on her telescope. Everyone else seemed absorbed by their actual task: charting Saturn’s hourly alignment in relation to the other planets.

It was tremendously boring stuff, of course, but it was better than LILY EVANS RUINING EVERYTHING.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” James started — but it was clear Lily _did_ know what she was talking about.

“I was there, Potter. Both times. I saw a bolt of white light come out of nowhere and hit Professor Aelling, and then you were suddenly standing there, in a corridor you hadn’t been in before, shouting about getting help. And then at dinner, your pal Lupin suddenly has a snake in his soup, and there’s another flash of white light, and now I’m looking at two Ravenclaw second-years on the ground.”

“I didn’t—”

“Save it,” Lily said. “I know you didn’t mean to hit Aelling. Even you’re not that stupid.”

No one delivered a backhanded compliment quite like Lily Evans.

“I don’t even care how you were hiding in the hallway, honestly. I just want to know why I shouldn’t turn you in for attacking those poor girls.”

James’s mind raced. She hadn’t turned him in yet. She was looking for a reason not to. He could figure this out.

“I didn’t… attack them… per se…”

“Come on.” In the dark, James couldn’t really see Lily glaring at him, but he could tell she definitely was. “You spent all day slinging Knockback Jinxes at them every time their back was turned. Two girls who didn’t do anything to you.”

That was it. That was the solution.

“That’s only sort of true,” he said, with a quick look around to make sure no one else was listening. “But they did something to Peter.”

He couldn’t tell the boys that he was doing this. Peter would be mortified. And Remus would probably rocket into space, move the moon so it was full or whatever, and then jump back down to Earth to devour him with his sharp werewolfy teeth.

But it was the only way. Lily would understand. She’d probably call him an idiot, but she’d understand.

“God, you’re an idiot,” she said, as soon as he was finished. “But you’re right. What those other kids did to Peter…”

The crescent moon poked out from behind a cloud, giving him just enough light to see a single tear on her cheek.

“You promise this is it?” she asked. “You’re just going to turn it around on them, and not do anything worse?”

“Of course,” he said. “It’s not, like, a revenge mission or whatever. It’s just justice. Poetic, if we can.”

“Well, you’ve certainly found a dramatic way to do it so far,” Lily said. “Between your antics today and what Sirius did to those girls in his Runes class… it certainly makes him look a little less like an asshole, that’s for sure.”

“And you promise you won’t tell anyone?” James asked. “Especially Peter?”

“Of course not,” she said. “That poor guy. I know this has been a hard year for him, but I had no idea. … Are you sure I can’t convince you to talk to McGonagall about it?”

“McGonagall wouldn’t do anything without proof,” James said, lying on the spot. Or maybe not lying — saying it out loud, it sounded true. “This is the best way to handle it. No one has done anything to Peter since we started… Maybe we can just scare off the rest of the bad apples and everything can go back to normal.”

“I hope so,” she said, looking away for a moment. “Do you ever feel like things were a lot simpler when we were first-years? Before… before all this, with the war?”

James didn’t quite know how their conversation had veered in this direction, but he was happy to talk about anything that wasn’t Lily telling McGonagall what he’d done today. “The war was still going on our first year,” he said, “we just didn’t know about it, really.”

“That’s true,” she replied. “I guess that’s what I miss. I miss just being a kid whose best friend had told her they could do magic. A kid who just assumed nothing magical could be bad. Maybe that makes me just a fool.”

“I don’t think you’re a fool,” James said, leaning in a little closer. “I think you’re one of the smartest witches I know.”

Lily gave a little laugh at that. “Maybe someday,” she said. “Thanks, though. You’re not so bad, Potter.”

“I do my best.”

She wasn’t going to tell. James could tell she didn’t necessarily agree with what they were doing… but she understood. That meant their secret was safe.

That meant it was time to start thinking about the next names on their list.


	10. Things We Said Today

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius is trying to focus on pranking the boys who hurt Peter, but it's really, really hard when he keeps finding himself drawn closer and closer to his new friend Barry instead.

“This is borderline cruel,” James said, peering over his copy of _Transfiguration Today_ to look at the two Hufflepuff boys on the other end of the library. “It’s Valentine’s Day and we’re messing with love. Maybe we’re the bad guys.”

“The last time you were in charge, our Defense Against the Dark Arts professor spent the night in the hospital wing,” Remus replied. “You don’t get a vote for another few weeks.”

On principle, Sirius agreed with James. But his head and heart had both been cartwheeling all around his insides ever since he’d walked into the Gryffindor changing room on his birthday, and watching what appeared to be every student in the castle exchanging love notes all week had only made things worse.

As far as he was concerned, whoever this “Saint Valentine” character was should consider himself lucky he was already dead, so Sirius didn’t have to tear him limb from limb for inventing such a stupid holiday.

“Be quiet!” Peter whispered. “I think this is theirs now!”

A house-elf had just appeared around a bookshelf, walking as quickly as it could with a parcel under each arm.

It was a sight that had become commonplace this week. After a particularly bad Death Eater attack at the end of January, one of the professors had apparently suggested that the castle’s house-elves be deputized to deliver candies, chocolates, and the like throughout the castle, as a way of both charming and distracting the worried student body.

Sirius suspected it was Professor Matthews. The woman was particularly intolerable this week, having brought in a mountain of trashy Muggle magazines for them to peruse. Sirius could have gone the rest of his life without knowing Princess So-and-So was breaking up with Mr. Blanky-Blank or whatever.

But as stupid as the House-Elf Legion of Happy Lovers was, it had given Remus the perfect solution to how they were going to get back at a pair of seventh-years who could probably hex them up their own assholes.

“Now remember, whatever happens,” Remus said, “we can’t react until someone else does. It’s supposed to be a total coincidence that we’re here studying.”

“Wait,” Peter said. “‘Whatever happens?’ Don’t we know—”

“My mum sent me boxes that have more than one flavor of candy in them,” Remus said, a devilish grin on his face. “So I thought it’d be fun to add multiple “flavors” of our own. Give us a bit of a surprise.”

“Oh, that’s awful,” Sirius said. He was half-amused and half-disgusted by the prospect. “What all did you and James find? You took my suggestion of a Garlic Jinx, right?”

“Yes, I think the custard creams have a Garlic Jinx,” Remus said. “The caramels have Belcher’s Banes on them, the nougats have a modification of the same slug thing they used on Peter… and then we put Flatulence Potions over the milk chocolates, right?”

“No, that’s the ones with the ganache,” James said. “Every time we tried to pour Flatulence Potion on the milk chocolates they melted on us. I think we might have actually forgot to spike the ones that are left.”

“Well, we’d better hope that Kirkpatrick and Flynn aren’t milk chocolate lovers,” Sirius said, “or we expended a lot of effort for nothing.”

“Shhh!” Remus elbowed him. “Here we go.”

Across the room, the house-elf was chattering inaudibly with the two boys. Flynn was blushing something fierce, while Kirkpatrick just looked happy to get free chocolate. Both nodded up and down at whatever the creature before them was saying, and then as soon as it was gone, they put their heads together, muttering over the contents of the cards they’d attached to both.

“What’d you write in there anyway?” Peter asked.

“Oh, you know. ‘From your secret admirer,’ ‘sweets for my sweet,’ garbage like that.” Remus winked at James. “Most of it was cribbed from the notes James was writing to his _girlfriend_.”

“Shut up, Remus.” James’s irritation was clearly fake; Sirius could see him trying not to smile.

At least someone was enjoying this bloody awful holiday.

They had the boxes open now, and were surveying the contents.

“Want to take bets on which they pick?” James whispered.

Sirius was about to reply, but the boys beat him to it. Each shoved two chocolates in, one after another, dopey grins on their faces.

“Too late,” Peter said. “Guess we’ll have to wait and see which ones they ate.”

But they didn't stop there. They each ate two or three more as they continued talking and studying, oblivious to the foursome watching them from across the room.

“Nothing’s happening,” James muttered. “Remus, are you sure you did this right?”

“Well, it’s not like I tested them. But I followed the directions right…”

Some instinct in the back of Sirius’s mind was turning his stomach into knots.

“Guys,” he said, hesitantly, “you did some research into what happens if you combine spells like these… right?”

Both James and Remus suddenly looked worried.

“You don’t think they’d counter-act each other, do you?”

“I can’t imagine. They’re all so different. But maybe—”

A gagging sound stopped them dead, and all four looked up at the same time to see Evan Kirkpatrick white as a sheet, one hand pressed against his chest. His friend had backed his chair away, his face all blotchy.

“Oh no,” Sirius said. “Do you think—”

Without warning, Kirkpatrick gagged again, loud enough to get the attention of every student in view. There was suddenly a pungent and inescapable odor of garlic. Flynn was trying to stand, but his hands were shaking.

And Sirius realized something very bad was about to happen.

“You know what,” he said, getting to his feet. “I don’t think I need to see this.”

“You can’t leave,” James hissed. “It’ll look too suspicious.”

The splotches on Flynn’s face looked blue and green now.

“I can’t not leave,” Sirius said. He could feel his stomach churning like he was the one who’d scarfed down half a box of tainted treats. “Don’t tell me how it goes. I’m not joking.”

He left at a near-run, detention be damned, and the cries of disgust from behind him told him he'd made the right decision.

He wasn’t going to be able to eat anything Italian for months. Maybe the rest of his life.

“Hey, what’s the hurry?”

Sirius had been rushing out of the library so quickly, he nearly ran down Barry Stebbins, who was now looking at him with a strange little smile.

Great. Just what he needed.

Sirius quashed down the part of his mind that did a backflip to see his Ancient Runes classmate. He needed to say hi to Barry and go. That was it.

But of course what he said instead was…

“You do not want to go in there. Follow me.”

And Barry followed, of course.

Sirius tried to keep up his end of the conversation all the way to 101B, but his mind was miles distant. Of all the days. Valentine’s Day.

It had been three months since his birthday, and he was finally starting to face the facts, as awful as they were.

Walking into that changing room full of half-naked blokes had seemed to set something loose inside of his mind. It was like a rampaging hippogriff, smashing into anything Sirius tried to throw in his way.

And he was certainly trying to throw things in its way. He’d stopped showering at the same time as any of the other boys in his dorm, even though James was the only Quidditch player in the changing room who he’d been able to look at with any semblance of decency. Over Christmas, he’d gone “for a walk” and nicked half a dozen dirty magazines from the grubby shop on the other side of Godric’s Hollow, not that he’d had the nerve to do anything with them other than leave them at the very bottom of his trunk as very unconvincing evidence that he was interested in the naked witches waving at him from within its pages.

Because he wasn’t. He really, really, hated to admit it, and he certainly couldn’t imagine doing so to a single soul. Even James or Remus. But it was true. There wasn’t a single naked body in those magazines that made him feel anything but self-loathing.

It had taken him longer to realize that he had a bigger problem. When they’d gotten back from the Christmas holidays, Sirius had tried as hard as he could not to be alone with his thoughts, throwing himself into this plan to get justice for Peter and — to Remus’s continuing astonishment — into his studies.

It took him three weeks — until Remus made a snide comment about James using his extra Quidditch practices as an opportunity to snog with Dorcas — to realize that he’d tricked himself into spending a substantially greater amount of time alone with Barry. And that he _wanted_ time alone with Barry. That his heart rate beat faster every time he saw his Ravenclaw friend.

Naturally ever since that revelation, he’d been trying to spend less time with Barry, but not very successfully. Sure, every time Barry suggested a study session, or bumped into him in the halls, Sirius had a momentary impulse to pull away, say no, drift back into the safe world of just being classmates.

But it never won out.

That’s how he kept ending up here, in 101B, sitting on a mountain of cushions nicked from other rooms with the boy he wished he didn’t fancy.

“What was that about?” Barry said, flopping down into a plush red pillow bigger than the both of them put together. “Madam Flood on a rampage again?”

“Worse,” Sirius replied. “Me and the lads were crossing another two names off our list for Peter, but it sort of backfired… Turns out Garlic Jinxes do not mix well with any other bodily function-inducing hexes.”

Barry snorted with laughter. “Say no more,” he said. “My brothers hit me with a Sardine Hex and a Bat-Bogey Hex at the same time when I was 8. I had fish wiggling out of my nostrils for days.”

This, Sirius suddenly realized, was one of the reasons he liked Barry. The other boy might seem buttoned-up to the rest of the world — and from what Sirius had observed, that was how he behaved with his fellow Ravenclaws too — but when it was just the two of them alone, he was like a whole other person. He was more relaxed, more off-color. More fun.

And it felt like he was the reason for it all — like he was the reason Barry could be and feel this way.

That shouldn’t have made his stomach do somersaults. But it did.

“How did you pull that off in the middle of the library?” Barry asked. “Flood’s got all those anti-jinx hexes in the stacks, or so I hear.”

“We did it in advance,” Sirius said. “Remus had his mum send along some Valentine’s chocolates and we jinxed them in our dorm room.”

Remus’s poor mum probably thought he had a sweetheart or two in the castle. Sirius hoped he let her down easy.

“We gave them to one of those traveling house-elves, the ones that are taking Valentine’s Day presents all around the castle? Their appetites did the rest.”

“Right, of course.” Barry looked somber suddenly. “I’ve never really liked Valentine’s Day. It makes me feel like…”

Barry trailed off, and Sirius didn’t press. He didn’t know what to say. Barry did this sometimes, an unspoken thought pulling their conversation into a downward spiral.

But to Sirius’s surprise, Barry actually voiced it this time.

“Maybe you don’t feel this way with your family,” he said, “but there’s not many Stebbins left in the world, pureblood or otherwise. And it feels like there’s always this pressure to make every decision with that in mind, you know? To keep the magical bloodline going, keep it strong.

“I mean, every single girl my brothers have ever started seeing’s become a source of evaluation and conflict since moment one. But it never seems to bother them. Because they’re in on it too. They’ve grown up listening to the same lectures as me, and they agree that this is important. So I don’t have anyone else…”

It felt like there was something else Barry was trying to say to him. But Sirius didn’t have a clue what it was.

“I don’t know whether I feel the same as them, about all that. But that isn’t really even the problem. It doesn’t matter whether I agree or not, because… I just…”

Sirius watched Barry thinking, mulling over each word before it passed through his lips.

“I don’t… I’m not sure I can fulfill that expectation of theirs. I want to, I do, because it’s important to them and I guess it is to me a little too but… As long as I can remember, I’ve been… I’ve felt…

Sometime while he was talking, Barry had shifted in his seat, moving just a little closer to Sirius. And Sirius realized he’d done the exact same thing, without even noticing.

Their eyes were locked now, Barry’s steel-blue irises looking back at him with a request he could almost hear him saying out loud: _Tell me you understand. Don’t make me say any more. Don’t tell me I’m wrong about you_.

But maybe he was just projecting all that.

He couldn’t be… Sirius hadn’t done anything to… How would he…

Sirius opened his mouth to take a leap of faith.

And Barry pulled his eyes away, scrambling to his feet.

“I gotta go,” he said, not looking at Sirius. “I gotta study. I’m behind on my Herbology work.”

“Let me help,” Sirius tried, getting up himself. “I have it first thing in the morning, I’m already done with my essay—”

“No, I’m sorry, no.”

Barry was nearly running to the door.

“I’ve gotta go, Sirius. I’m sorry.”

Then he was gone, leaving Sirius standing there, staring down at rippling mosaic tiles and wanting to throw himself into the real North Sea.

——

“You sure you’re okay, Sirius?” Peter asked as they started walking up the Grand Staircase. “It seemed like you were tossing and turning for an hour before you finally fell asleep last night, and you look awful.”

“Gee, thanks for sugarcoating it, Peter.”

Delivery aside, Sirius couldn’t really dispute what his friend was trying to communicate to him. He’d been able to fall asleep at a moment’s notice as long as he could remember, but last night…

Last night all he’d been able to think about was Barry Bloody Stebbins, who he thought was his friend but might be something more or less.

He honestly didn’t know which he wanted anymore, but he wanted something different than this — this awful, sick in-between feeling. He’d tried to catch Barry’s eye at dinner last night and breakfast this morning, but the other boy had just stared down at his plate, making half-hearted conversation with the students next to him. He hadn’t even shown up for lunch.

As a result, Sirius looked and felt like a hippogriff with a head cold today.

But it still wasn’t particularly nice of Peter to mention it.

“You know, if you had stayed in the library, I wouldn’t be surprised about you feeling so awful,” Remus said, from the other side of Peter, “but since you left early…”

“I’m fine,” Sirius lied. “I’ve got a, uh, hard lesson coming up in Runes now. Not feeling super prepared.”

Remus didn’t look like he wanted to take that at face value, but not being in the class he didn’t have any reason to doubt Sirius. One of the benefits of taking a class none of his friends were in, he supposed.

“Well, I know you usually study with your friend Barry,” Remus said, “but if you want someone to just quiz you on things this weekend, I’m free.

Peter turned to look at Remus so fast Sirius could almost hear the whip-crack of his neck. “Remus! We have that huge Divination project due on Tuesday, and there’s a Quidditch match tomorrow, so we’re already losing a day to work on it!”

“I’m 100 percent dropping this class sometime between now and next year, Peter,” Remus replied, looking a little embarrassed. “So I’m not super concerned with what grade Professor Morrigan gives me this term.”

Peter looked like he was about to start crying, which made Sirius _extremely_ relieved that he’d finally reached the sixth floor.

“I’ll let you know, Remus,” he said, trying not to drive the knife into Peter’s back any harder. “See you in History of Magic?”

“I’ll bring you a pillow so you can catch up on your sleep,” Remus replied sarcastically. “God knows I’m just going to end up reteaching you everything before final exams anyway.”

As Sirius wound his way through the halls to Ancient Runes, he considered petitioning McGonagall to give Remus permission to drop Muggle Studies next term too. If he was this much more fun only dropping one class he couldn’t stand, Remus might be almost back to normal if he was down two of them.

The thought was so amusing, he managed to forget why he was dreading this class for a whole hallway or two.

When he got to Ash-Karlsen’s classroom, Barry was already there, finishing what appeared to be one of the sandwiches they’d been served at lunch. He must have snuck into the kitchens the way Sirius had showed him before the holidays.

Whatever. That was his prerogative. Sirius couldn’t make him come to lunch with his house if he didn’t want to. It was fine.

Sirius slid into his desk next to Barry without saying anything right away. Barry seemed to be doing whatever he could to avoid looking at him.

“Hey,” Sirius finally said, when he had all his books on his desk. “You doing okay? You left kind of fast yesterday and I didn’t see you at lunch—”

“I had other stuff to do,” Barry said quickly. He turned to look at Sirius just enough to avoid being rude. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Sirius said. Not that it was. “If you change your mind, we can always talk this weekend? You know Ash-Karlsen’s not going to get through this whole lesson today so if you want we can meet up on Sunday sometime.”

“Don’t think that’s gonna work,” Barry muttered. “Quidditch match this weekend. Ravenclaw versus Slytherin. Really important.”

“That’s on Saturday,” Sirius said. He felt a flicker of near-disgust knowing something about Quidditch off the top of his head. “I’m talking about Sunday.”

“Well, I might have some other stuff to do, so why don’t I find you if I’m free?”

Sirius felt his stomach start to tie itself into a knot. “I mean, sure, I guess, but—”

Ash-Karlsen stepped up to the podium before Sirius could finish his thought. “All right, all right, settle down,” he said. “Now, I know we have a great deal to discuss regarding the rune Othila today, but before we do so I just have one more anecdote to share about my time working with Gringotts on vault defense systems…”

Over the next hour, Sirius waited while Ash-Karlsen told them two stories about working at Gringotts, one long legend about how the first house-elves came to Britain, and a third of what they were actually supposed to learn about the rune Othila. And when it was all finally over, he opened his mouth to say something, anything to Barry…

But Barry was already on his feet, leaving without another word.

——

“Sirius. Earth to Sirius Black.”

Sirius whipped his head around to look at Remus.

“I just told you that the number three signifies matters of the soul, secular authority and kittens.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” Sirius gave a half-hearted look down at Remus’s copy of _Numerology & Grammatica. _“That’s right. What’s next?”

“It is not right,” Remus replied, frowning. “There is not a single arithmantic principle that has anything to do with kittens. Which should be obvious. If you were paying attention!”

Sirius had already started spacing out again, he realized, staring out the window of the bell tower at nothing.

“I’m sorry,” he said, pushing Remus’s textbook back across the floor toward him. “You should probably find James or Peter to study for your exam with. I’m just…”

“Distracted? Yeah, I got that.” Remus didn’t get up. Sirius could see him surveying his expression out of the corner of his eye. “What’s up with you this weekend? You’ve been weird ever since you bailed on us in the library.”

It was really too bad that Sirius couldn’t just say, “Oh, I’ve been spending the last three days trying to figure out if the boy I have a disgusting crush on is equally as messed up as me.” Because he almost suspected Remus might be the only one of his friends who would be able to sympathize. He knew what it was like to be something you didn’t want to be, even if it was just once every 28 and a half days.

“I’m fine,” he said instead. “Maybe you’re the one being weird. You and the others did inhale a surprising amount of noxious garlic fumes before Madam Flood finally called Pomfrey and evacuated the library.”

“Ugh,” Remus said, turning green around the gills. “Don’t remind me. We need a less noxious way to deal with the rest of the names on that list. At least one of these misadventures needs to go right.”

For a moment, Sirius almost thought he’d managed to divert his friend’s attention.

But then Remus was right back at it again.

“You’re wrong about the fumes, though, because James and Peter were both there with me and they think you’re fine. Well, Peter thinks you’re fine, except for the fact that you aren’t sleeping, which he has chalked up to indigestion. James thinks you’ve grown an unsightly mole or a tail or something, since you keep insisting on showering before any of us wake up in the morning even though you _hate_ getting up early.”

Dammit. They’d noticed. Sirius had not expected them to notice.

He was going to have to tell Remus some version of the truth. Not the actual truth. He couldn’t stand being all alone at Hogwarts again. It was bad enough the first time. To do it again would kill him.

But maybe he could share enough truth that he could get Remus to stop worrying about him. Hell, maybe Remus could even help him figure out what to do, if he did this just right.

“Okay, fine,” he admitted. “It’s about Barry.”

“I sort of figured,” Remus said. “It was either that or you were fighting with your parents about something, and I haven’t seen you get an owl from them in months.”

“I don’t even really understand what happened,” Sirius said. “But after I left you guys on Thursday, I bumped into him and we were hanging out, and…”

Sirius thought for a moment about how he wanted to phrase this.

“I said some dumb thing offhand and he got all quiet and weird. And then he wouldn’t talk to me about it and we got in a big fight and he stormed off.”

“That’s really weird,” Remus said, spinning a quill back and forth between his fingers as he thought. “What did you say to him that started it all?”

“I don’t even remember,” Sirius lied. “Maybe something about our prank? But now he won’t talk to me. And I don’t even know what I would say if he did want to talk to me.”

Remus considered that a moment.

“Okay,” he finally said, “I don’t know if this advice is any good, but hear me out.”

“Sure.”

“I think if you want to be friends, you have to find him and make him tell you what’s going on.” Remus looked incredibly unsure of his own suggestion, but started nodding in agreement with himself as he went on. “Normally, I would say to give him space. But based on the limited information I have and the fact that he’s in a different house than us, I’m guessing he can just keep ignoring you for the rest of the year.”

“Okay… but—”

“But there's another thing you should think about first,” Remus said. “Do you actually want to talk to him about this?”

Sirius blinked. “What?”

“Look, maybe I’m off-base here,” Remus said, “but it sort of seems like if you wanted to know what is up with Barry, you would have tracked him down yourself already. You are not generally one to avoid confrontation, Sirius.”

“Well… I guess I could have… but…”

Sirius didn’t know how to explain it a way that made sense to Remus. He couldn’t ask Barry what he was trying to tell him because if he was wrong — then Barry would know everything, and he’d push Sirius away. Or worse. He was already the embarrassment of the family just for being in Gryffindor. If it got out that he was a pouf on top of all that…

“I’m just saying, it’s not like he’s your only friend.” Remus made a face as soon as the sentence was out of his mouth. “Ugh. That made me sound like a jealous boyfriend. Gross. What I’m trying to say is that if you don’t want to find out why he’s got his knickers in a twist, you don’t have to. You have me and James and Peter. We’ll be here no matter what.”

Sirius didn’t know if that was true anymore. He wanted to believe it. He and his friends had stuck by Remus when he told them he was a werewolf. They’d stuck by Peter when his dad became a fugitive. Maybe they’d stand by him too.

And maybe it didn’t really matter either way. Remus said he didn’t have to find out what Barry was thinking. But as soon as he’d said that to Sirius, he’d felt himself reject that idea on a fundamental level. He couldn’t go without knowing. It had been eating away at him for days, and he couldn’t let it go on.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “I’m gonna go try and find him. Is that okay?”

Remus looked surprised, and Sirius wondered if his friend had been secretly hoping for him to come to the other conclusion.

But if he was thinking that, Remus didn’t say it aloud. “Sure. You’re not really helping me study for my Arithmancy exam, so…”

“Great.” Sirius quickly hopped to his feet, dragging his bag along with him. “I’ll see you upstairs later?”

He didn’t wait to listen for Remus’s response. He had a castle to search.

——

It took him the better part of two hours, but eventually Sirius found where Barry was hiding.

He’d ruled out the possibility that he was just in the Ravenclaw common room right away. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking, but Barry had told him before that he never liked studying in rooms where other people weren’t studying — too many distractions.

Of course, there was no guarantee Barry was spending his time avoiding Sirius by studying, but he was a Ravenclaw… so Sirius had started with the study spots he knew about: The library. Room 101B. The parapet on the fourth floor overlooking the lake, even though it was half-iced-over now, of course.

No luck. He had to be somewhere new.

Or, as it turned out, somewhere old.

After a couple dead-ends, Sirius was on his way up to the seventh floor — maybe Barry was in his common room after all — when he hesitated on the sixth floor landing. He could see from here that their Runes classroom was empty… but there were plenty of other abandoned chambers on this particular floor.

He knew he’d hit on the right corridor as soon as the portrait of the infamously hideous pirate Glanmore Peakes spied him with the eye that wasn’t a bloody ruin.

“O’ nae," the portrait spat. “Not another one a’ye. Can’t a portrait git any peace around’ ‘ere?”

“Oh, go stick that sword in your other eye,” Sirius responded, hardly paying any attention. There. It was that one.

He walked past Peakes’s portrait into a dimly lit storeroom that seemed to hold an entire mansion’s worth of couches and armchairs. They were arranged and stacked by color, with the most popular shades reaching impossible heights that brushed the ceiling with no sign of collapse.

Barry was there, legs stretched down the length of a marshy yellow divan, lost in thought. He looked up with surprise when Sirius approached; a patchwork of rugs had muffled his footsteps as he’d entered.

“Merlin’s breath,” he gasped. “Are you always sneaking up on people like that, Sirius?”

“Only when they’re avoiding me.” The divan was too short for Sirius to sit but on top of Barry, so he tapped the other boy’s legs. “Move. I’m sitting down.”

With a pout, Barry sat up a little straighter and pulled his legs in toward his body, wrapping his arms around them to hold them in place.

It wasn’t a pose that screamed “I’m ready to open up to you,” but Sirius would take what he could get.

“I’m not avoiding you,” Barry said as he sat down. “I just… wanted to be alone.”

“Well, you got it,” Sirius replied. “You’ve had three whole days to ignore me, including during the entirety of our Ancient Runes class Friday afternoon. It was _extremely_ unfair of you to make me listen to Ash-Karlsen’s whole lecture uninterrupted.”

He got a little smile in response to that. It was a good sign.

“You can’t keep avoiding me forever,” Sirius continued. “Eventually you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on.”

“Bullshit.” He was going to have to throw himself into it. If he hesitated, he would lose his nerve altogether. “We were having a normal conversation Thursday, and then all of a sudden you start talking about your family, and how you don’t like Valentine’s Day, and…”

Sirius paused, trying to think of the right way to say what he needed to.

“You… you wanted to tell me something. Or that’s how it felt. What was it?”

“It was nothing,” Barry said, face growing red. “I was stressed out about classes. I had that Herbology work—”

“Herbology doesn’t faze you,” Sirius said. “None of your classes do. The only thing you’re stressed about is having this conversation with me.”

“Well, you’re right about that.” Barry started to shift position, move his feet toward the ground. “I have other stuff to do, so—”

“Stop.” Without even thinking, Sirius leaned forward and pushed Barry back against the arm of the couch, lightly holding him there with one hand.

His fingers had naturally slipped beneath the edge of Barry’s robe, brushed against the edge of his shirt collar. He could trace the other boy’s clavicle with his index finger, if he wanted.

He wanted.

Barry had stopped talking mid-sentence, paralyzed by the touch of Sirius’s hand. He licked his lips and swallowed, his creeks growing pale as his eyes.

Sirius’s heart was racing. Barry’s too. Sirius could feel it through his fingertips.

“Don’t go,” Sirius said. “Please don’t go.”

“I—”

“What were you going to tell me?” Sirius asked. Begged, really. “Tell me, Barry.”

“I can’t,” Barry said, voice dropping into a whisper. “I want to. But I— I’ve—”

“If you tell me,” Sirius said, his voice just as soft, “I’ll tell you.”

Sirius realized he had slid down the couch, closer to Barry. Closer than he’d ever been to anyone.

So close that he could see the moment Barry changed his mind in those goddamn steel-blue eyes.

“What I tell you stays in here, right?” Barry said. “No one else knows. Not even your friends.”

“They don’t know anything,” Sirius said. “They won’t know anything.”

Barry hesitated for only one more second.

“Then close the door,” he said.

Sirius had never once done wandless or wordless magic on purpose before. But slamming the storeroom door shut without a glance was the easiest bit of magic he’d ever done.

Kissing Barry Stebbins was a close second.


	11. When I Get Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys are on a roll, getting revenge one bully at a time. But when they go for the last names on their list, they may finally be biting off more than they can chew.

It was the first truly nice day of March, and it couldn’t have been better timed.

James, his friends, and what seemed like half the school were out on the lawn, blankets spread out to keep the still-muddy ground off their robes. In truth, it wasn't truly warm out — in a couple of weeks, it would be the kind of weather that would keep everyone indoors instead of out — but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and as the sun beamed down there was at least the illusion of warmth.

James didn't care about a lick of it. He was only focused on one thing.

“Oliver Knott,” he said, glaring at the seventh-year a few blankets away, talking to his classmates. “Your time is up.”

The empty air sighed and admonished him in a whisper. “Don’t be so bloody melodramatic, James.”

To those around them, it appeared to be just James, Peter and Sirius on their particular blanket. But they knew better. Before leaving the castle along with a half-hundred other excited students, James had begrudgingly loaned Remus his Invisibility Cloak. He was sitting beside them now, wand in hand — or, at least, James assumed he was.

“It’s very weird that you’re using James’s cloak,” Sirius said, squinting in vain to try and see where Remus was.

“Tell me about it,” James said. He had been against this from the start. It was his Invisibility Cloak, and he should be the one wearing it. But Remus had made a convincing argument that James needed to be visible for this particular prank, since he had publicly confronted Knott at Hogsmeade several months back and his teammates would kill him if there was a hint of suspicion that James had started jinxing members of the Slytherin Quidditch team.

“Are we sure we want to do this?”

Peter looked miserable. He had been grousing all morning about how Oliver Knott wasn’t the same as the other 11 students who’d been bullying him, and trying to convince them to wait a few more days to talk about it.

But there was no point in waiting. Oliver Knott had not been hard to follow — James had easily been able to look up the Slytherin practice schedule, and a few days of Invisibility Cloak surveillance had filled in the rest.

They could have jinxed him at any moment… but James’s experience with the Ravenclaw girls had made Remus hesitant to agree to any strikes where they didn't have control of as many facts as possible — and a lot of witnesses to “prove” that they didn’t do anything. And James supposed he shouldn’t argue with that.

He had. At length. But he probably shouldn’t have.

The sunlight spreading through the castle this morning at the speed of gossip had given them exactly the window they needed, though. James and the others had already been thinking about joining the students who were headed outside to enjoy the unexpected bright Saturday afternoon when Sirius returned from a Runes study session with Barry to tell them that he’d seen Oliver Knott on the way out of the castle. He and Remus were on board right away, and not even Peter’s protests could keep them from grabbing their own blanket and hurrying down to the grounds.

But their friend was being a real stick in the mud now.

“He’s a seventh-year. He probably knows more hexes than all four of us combined. And he didn’t really do anything to me, he just—”

“We know, we know,” James said. “He just talked to you. It’s a sad story. Remus, do the thing.”

No one responded. James was beginning to think Remus had taken the piss out of them and wandered off when another whisper drifted out of the blank space next to Sirius.

“Peter,” Remus said, “we talked about this. We decided. I’m already invisible and ready, for god’s sake. We’re not doing anything permanent. Just sending a message. You have to get on board with this.”

Peter fidgeted, looking away at the lake.

James let him squirm. They were doing this all for him. Well, James was a little bit doing it for himself because of how well Knott had flown in the Ravenclaw/Slytherin game last month, but they were _mostly_ doing it all for Peter.

James could be on a blanket with his girlfriend, or inside finding an unusually abandoned corner of the castle with his girlfriend, but instead he’d told Dorcas he would see her later and come out here in the not-as-warm-as-he-wanted-it-to-be sunshine so that they could check another name off their list. The least Peter could do was be appreciative.

But James had learned enough to know that when Peter was on the fence about something, you just had to wait for a little while. As long as you didn’t put your foot in your mouth, he always came around to your side of things.

So James waited. And then…

“Alright, do it,” Peter said.

He looked miserable about it, but James knew he’d get over it. “Alright, Remus,” he said, trying to look like he was doing anything except looking straight at Oliver Knott, “just like we practiced.”

Remus’s whisper had been hard enough to hear before, but he muttered the first “ _Engorgio”_ so softly that James could barely hear it.

Knott didn’t seem to notice exactly what was happening at first, but then James, out of the corner of his eye, saw him hesitate in the middle of a sentence, moving his mouth experimentally.

“Perfect,” James said. “Now the next one.”

Remus muttered again, the word _“Tholieck”_ barely audible, and then Oliver Knott made a sudden “HRK” of surprise, his hand jumping to his mouth in panic.

“Oh, this is going to be bloody good,” Sirius said, leaning forward with greedy eyes.

James started to say something about not looking so obviously responsible, but Knott saved him the trouble by opening his mouth and screaming. Every head on the lawn turned to look just in time to see his triple-sized tongue loll out of his mouth and tie itself into…

Well, into another knot.

“Mmph mahah phh dahtha,” Knott screamed, or tried to. Students were laughing all around, even his supposed friends. “Ah ith nawh phhphah.”

“Merlin’s beard,” one of the Slytherin seventh-years said, loud enough to hear, as he looked around the lawn. “Who’d you piss off, Knott?”

James tried to look natural while clearly keeping both hands visible. The boy’s eyes drifted past without hesitation, lingering instead on a group of Slytherin girls who had completely collapsed into banshee screams of laughter.

Another of Knott’s friends picked up the bottle of Firewhisky Knott had been taking nips out of and gave it a careful sniff. “You think somebody could have dosed this?”

“MHRRH.”

“If they did, he’s boned,” the first boy replied. “I haven’t seen a poisoning this bad since that stupid Gryffindor in Slughorn’s class put petals instead of nettles in her De-Dizzying Draught last year.”

Knott tried to answer, but his tongue twisted again, tying the knots in knots. What wasn't bundled up in on itself was lolling out onto the grass, and coating it and the Slytherins’ blanket in an alarming amount of drool.

“I think you probably should do something, Jones,” said one of Knott’s other friends. “You are a prefect, after all.”

Jones scoffed. “I’m not going inside this early. Knott’s a grown wizard, he can walk himself into the hospital wing. I’m going to stay right here and — ‘ey, come off it, Knott!”

While the prefect was speaking, Knott had given up on shouting and started shaking Jones’s arm violently. His tongue slobbered everywhere as he did so; the effect was something like a midsummer shower.

James couldn’t resist any longer. He burst into laughter, falling down on his back and issuing belly laughs all the way up into the sky. He seemed to have broken Sirius and Peter too; he could hear their own laughter even before he sat up to find them clutching each other's arms in an attempt to keep upright. Even Remus was giggling, though James could tell their invisible conspirator was trying to muffle the sound.

By the time they finally stopped, Knott had convinced one of the other boys to go with him — not Jones — and they were heading back up the slope toward the castle, the gossip of every student in earshot following after them.

“Okay, I’ll admit it,” Peter said in a whisper. “That was pretty funny.”

“I told you!” James said, remembering just in time to keep his voice down, so Knotts’ so-called friends couldn’t hear. “Nice work, Remus. That was even better than I expected.”

“Thanks,” Remus said. “I was a little worried it might choke him eventually but it seems like the density-to-mass ratio worked out okay. I wonder if—”

“Nope, sorry, Remus,” Sirius interrupted. “You are hereby banned from further explaining or theorizing, as this prank is now too similar to Charms class, and I refuse to learn anything from this extremely hilarious experience.”

“We just have four left,” James said, ignoring Sirius. “The four Hufflepuffs.” The ones they’d been saving for last, he said to himself. The ones they were all too brave to admit they were scared of facing, after the way they’d handed Peter his ass. “We haven’t figured out their schedules yet. Maybe tonight I should take the cloak and try tracking one of them after dinner.”

“I’ve kept my eye on them already,” Remus said, “and I think we might have our work cut out for us. These four guys don’t always hang out together — not like us. We can get one or two at a time, but if we want to catch them all together, it’s going to be hard to find a good moment to strike.

“Actually,” Sirius said. “I think I might have found a good solution for that.”

——

“That’s your solution?” James asked. “A shiny rock?”

“A shiny _crystal_ ,” Sirius said, pushing the brown paper and square box it had been packaged in away from him to better reveal the hand-sized, multi-faceted gem. The other three boys were all crowded around him on his bed, eager to see the item he’d been hinting at having ordered for days, though confusion was beginning to spread across their faces. He was so excited, he didn’t even mind that Peter had insisted on putting on his copy of _Houses of the Holy_ for the tenth time since they’d given him his new record player at Christmas.

“I don’t get it,” Remus said. “Is it a magic shiny crystal?”

“Not yet,” Sirius replied with a grin. Being the smartest person in the room was exciting. He could finally see why Remus enjoyed the experience so much.

“Right now, it’s just a normal clear crystal,” he continued, picking it up and turning it this way and that to emphasize its point. “But I’ve come across a spell that’ll turn it into a dirty rotten Hufflepuff tracker.”

“Neat!” Peter said. James and Remus looked more skeptical.

“Sirius,” Remus started, “I know those ads in the back of the comics you and James read sound very convincing, but…”

“I didn’t read about this in a comic!” Sirius felt a sudden surge of triumph. “I came across it in Porpentina Scamander’s autobiography, _Portentious Perils: The Life of an American Auror.”_

James laughed so hard and fast he nearly choked. “Merlin, Sirius, you’re reading a biography? For fun? Are you ill?”

Sirius felt a sickening shiver go through his body, radiating out from his stomach. Barry had recommended the book.

“Shut up, James,” Remus said. “Sirius, can you loan that to me when you’re done with it?”

“Sure, whatever,” Sirius said, trying to ignore James and Peter’s snickering and the sick feeling in his stomach. “Anyway, there was this one bit where Scamander was trying to track a group of wannabe Dark Witches and Wizards in New York. Big city, lots of concealment charms and disguises and the like, no idea when they were going to meet and too risky to track them 24/7, etc. So instead of wasting a lot of time and resources, she used one of these in conjunction with her personal variation on an Alarm Spell.”

James and Peter shared a fully confused glance, but there was recognition starting to dawn in Remus’s eyes. “Wait, so… Alarm Spells are supposed to go off when the targets get close to an enchanted object. How…”

“That’s the brilliant part,” Sirius said. “Scamander worked with an arithmancer and an alchemist — Nicolas Flamel, probably, but she is very careful not to say that exactly — to find a crystal that could be used as a focus for the spell and sort of reflect it back on itself. So instead of the crystal ringing when the targets get close to it—”

“It rings when they get close to each other!” Remus shouted, nearly falling off the bed in his excitement. “Oh, Sirius, that’s perfect!”

“That’s not even the best part,” Sirius said. “Because it’s a crystal, you can also—”

“Wait, wait, I’m still lost.” James picked up the crystal and held it up to his eye, causing it to splinter into a dozen blinking facets. “The crystal isn’t magic, but it lets you do something a spell normally can’t?”

“Sort of,” Sirius said. “I don’t know, it’s really complicated. And Scamander doesn’t describe everything in perfect detail in the book, so…”

“So this might not even work?” James asked.

Sirius felt his heart sink again.

“It should, though,” Remus interrupted, saving Sirius. “If we have the same sort of crystal as Scamander used.”

“And we should,” Sirius said. “The book mentions the arithmancer by name, and I had my Uncle Alphard follow up with her. The American Ministry apparently forbade her from disclosing the exact way she cut the crystal, but there was no reason she couldn’t just send one along already finished…”

“I’m sure your uncle made some financial contribution as well,” Peter said, with an unusual hint of bitterness that Sirius chose to ignore.

“He still feels guilty about how I was treated this summer,” Sirius said by way of explanation. “It’s certainly nice that somebody does, even without him paying to have the crystal shipped across the Atlantic.”

“Alright,” James said. “If nothing else, I’m intrigued. I’m guessing this is why you asked me to sneak up on these for assholes and pull their hair out?”

It certainly was. For the past week, Sirius and the others had been doing their best to track the schedules of Stafford, Elphick, Nettles and Abbott, getting a rough sense of their daily routines and confirming that there was no consistent time when they were all together, far away from prying eyes. While they were doing that, James had been taking advantage of his Invisibility Cloak to sneak up behind each of them and pluck a hair or two from the back of their heads — or, in the case of Howell, whose head was shaved practically to the skin, an arm hair that James was entirely too irritable about having to acquire.

James pulled a small bag out of his things and separated the clasp with a click, exposing a tiny bundle of hairs. “I didn’t keep them separated, because this was already creepy enough. Hope that’s okay.”

“It should be,” Sirius said, though he wasn’t terribly confident about that. “Put them down on the top of the crystal, in the shape of an X.” As James did that, grimacing the whole time, Sirius thought back to what he’d read in _Portentious Perils_ , and the spellbook from the library where he’d found a standard Alarm Spell explained. “Now, I’m supposed to take out my wand and trace the edge of the crystal three times…”

They went on like that for another few minutes — Sirius moving his wand in strange shapes, muttering the same sentence over and over. At one point, as the crystal began to shimmer blue-white, he had to put his hand directly on top of it, which was especially unpleasant since the glass had gone ice-cold and the hairs had gone red-hot. But when it was all done…

“ _Theconen aithair, ostlast chantiese.”_ He waved the wand one last time, and the now-glowing strands of hair melted into the crystal, which started to hum faintly.

“Wicked,” Peter breathed, leaning in to stare at it. “So now we’ll know when they’re all together?”

“Better,” Sirius said. “If I did this right, we’ll be able to—”

Without warning, the crystal let out a single, soft “ding.”

“It worked!” Remus said. “But now—”

Remus stopped talking as the crystal began to darken, taking on the hue and shade of shadowy torchlight.

“That’s the best part,” Sirius said, as his friend’s jaw dropped open. “This isn’t just a regular crystal. It’s a scrying crystal.”

“We can see them!” James and Peter shouted at the same time. They both reached to grab the crystal, but Sirius got his hand there first.

“Careful!” he shouted. “You’ll break it.”

“Show us then,” James said. “I barely got a chance to see, they were so small—”

Sirius wasn’t listening. He was holding the crystal up to his eye the way James had a few moments before, the flickering torchlight growing and growing…

Within the crystal, he could see Elphick sitting down in an armchair next to the other three, mouth moving without sound and his hands gesturing wildly. They were in a large room, with other students all around and a fireplace going behind Stafford. There was honey-colored wood all around, and what looked like fifty-odd plants thriving in every window he could see, despite the cold outside.

“They’re in their common room, I think,” Sirius breathed, finally putting all the pieces together. “Elphick just showed up, that’s why the crystal rang.”

“What are they saying?” Peter asked.

“Can’t tell,” Sirius admitted, lowering the crystal and gently handing it to James. “Careful with that, eh?”

“Sure, sure.”

James raised it up, his other eye closed tight, but after a moment, the color started to drain out of the crystal, and James looked down, confused. “I don’t understand. One of them got up for a second, and then—”

“Well, he must be leaving then,” Peter said. “Remember, it only works when they’re all together, right?”

“Right,” Sirius said. “But this’ll make it easier for us to find out when they _are_ together.”

“It’s brilliant, Sirius,” Remus said, face beaming. “Great work, mate.”

“Now there’s just one thing left for us to worry about,” James said. “Deciding what we’re going to do to them.”

“They’re our last set,” Remus said. “We need something good. Or something so bad that it’s good. What’s the most mortifying thing you can imagine?”

Getting caught with Barry Stebbins in a broom closet, Sirius thought instantly.

“I’m on the Quidditch pitch, getting on my broomstick, and I realize I’m wearing mismatched trainers,” James suggested.

Well, he supposed that was probably the same as being exposed as a pervert, in James’s mind.

“Shut up, James,” Remus said. “What do you think, Peter?”

“I dunno,” Peter said, his voice getting quiet and his face getting red. “Make Sirius answer first.”

Remus turned to look at him, and Sirius quickly fumbled for any sentence in the world that didn’t end with him snogging another boy.

“Well, I did get petrified in the Hieroglyphic Hall once with nothing but my pants on,” he said. “But it wasn’t that bad. What if we turned their skin bright blue?”

“I say we go with yellow,” James interjected. “They are Hufflepuffs, and cowards, so…”

“Wait a minute.” Remus was looking at Sirius like he had never seen him before. “The Hieroglyphic Hall. That was you?”

Sirius didn’t know what to say, but James — helpful as ever — was already replying.

“Mate, are you for real? You didn’t know that—”

“This was in first year, right? I heard that there was a first-year Gryffindor who got caught sneaking around and petrified but I thought it was Jack, or Nabin. I didn’t know… I guess I just assumed if it was you, you’ve…”

Sirius couldn’t figure out why Remus was so upset, but it certainly wasn’t necessary. “Remus, it’s water under the bridge, okay? Merlin’s bones, it happened more than two years ago. We weren’t even friends yet.”

“I just… Were you ever going to tell us?” he said. “This horrible thing happened to you, and it just… never came up?”

“Well it’s not like I was just going to drop it into conversation,” Sirius said, a bit indignantly. “And besides, I told James about it.”

“Remus, you were hung up on all your werewolf business at the time, I think,” James said. “And Peter… well, I don’t know what you were doing, Peter, if you didn’t know.”

“Oh, I totally knew,” Peter said. Sirius’s head shot around to glare at him, and the other boy immediately shrank back. “I mean, uh, not that I was, like, happy about it or anything. I just was sort of glad it wasn’t me. And it was a good reminder to stay away from all the Slytherins?”

“So I was the only one who didn’t know that you got hazed by all of Slytherin House in your very first term here at Hogwarts,” Remus said. “That’s awesome. Just awesome.”

“Look,” Sirius said, “it’s not a big deal, Remus. The prank is not a big deal, and it’s not a big deal that you didn’t know about it. I’m a big boy. I’ve moved on.”

That might not be perfectly true, but it was true enough for the time being.

Remus looked uncertain, but James was already talking again.

“So we’re going to petrify them then?” he said. “That doesn’t seem very exciting.”

“It isn’t,” Sirius said, eager to steer the conversation in any other direction. “We could always just throw them down the stairs, like they did Peter.”

“Too dangerous,” Remus said. “Peter was lucky to get away with a broken leg and a concussion, both easily fixable by Pomfrey. It could have been much worse.”

“Well, I’m open to a better suggestion once anyone has one.”

“I might have one.”

Sirius’s head turned to Peter, who was hesitantly raising his hand.

“We’re supposed to have the punishment fit the crime, right?” Peter said. “Well, there’s one bit of the crime I’m still a little sore about…”

——

“We can’t actually be going along with Peter’s idea, can we?”

Remus sighed. This was the third time James had tried to redirect their efforts in the last week and a half.

“If you have a better idea, I’d be happy to hear it,” he said, tugging another textbook down from the shelf. He stretched his arm downward, barely holding on long enough for James to reach up and grab it. “Don’t walk away; I have to get one for myself and I can’t climb down this ladder with a book in my arms.”

“Okay, okay,” James groused, as Remus reached up to grab another textbook. “But I still say that if it isn’t in _The Standard Book of Spells_ or _Intermediate Transfiguration,_ we shouldn’t be wasting our time trying to track it down and should just come up with something else.”

Remus ignored him. In his mind, Peter’s suggestion had been brilliant: Use the same enchantment the Hufflepuffs had cast on that copper statue on an additional four statues, each of which could imprison their four adversaries in their grasp as long they wished.

The only problem was that such magic was way beyond their current level. Not inherently an issue — the four of them had been reading ahead in their spellbooks for years — but…

“We’ve already gone through our entire Charms and Transfiguration textbooks,” James said, rehashing the same old argument. “There wasn’t anything in the fourth or fifth-year Charms books either. Since the Hufflepuffs are fifth-years and we know neither O’Brien nor McGonagall have changed their curriculum in decades, that just leaves Defense Against the Dark Arts as the class when they must have learned it. And with at least one new professor every year—”

“Jesus, James, I get it.” Remus wrapped a hand around Galatea Merrythought’s _Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts_ and passed it down. “Look, I know we’ve already gone through everything we know of that Brocken, Egg and Aelling have assigned, but these are really basic—”

“—old—”

“ _Basic_ textbooks. And it’s not inconceivable that one of the four of them might have gone researching something beyond the standard curriculum.”

“It’s a little inconceivable,” James said. “They’re Hufflepuffs, Remus.”

Remus glared at James the whole way down the ladder.

“And besides all that,” James continued as they walked back toward the others, “even if we do figure out this spell, we’re still not any closer to figuring out how we can actually catch them unawares.”

That Remus did not have an argument against. Yes, the charm Sirius had placed upon his scrying crystal had made it considerably easier to track the comings and goings of these four boys, but so far that hadn’t actually done them much good. The crystal did ring every time the Hufflepuffs were in the same place, but their only regular meetings were at times and places when Remus and the others couldn’t get there quickly. They rarely did anything together after dinner except go down to their common room, where they mostly just sat around a wireless, occasionally breaking into excited chatter about something that they couldn’t hear through the crystal.

To put it bluntly, Stafford, Elphick, Nettles and Abbott were boring as all hell.

“Look, I know we already celebrated my birthday earlier in the week,” James said, “but I sort of assumed we’d be doing more with our weekend than sitting in the library skim-reading a bunch of textbooks these morons have never laid eyes on.”

“We have a Hogsmeade trip tomorrow,” Remus replied. “And we were up until 3 am Wednesday night thanks to that bag of chocolate Voltesers Sirius ordered for you. I still haven’t stopped vibrating.”

“Yeah, they have definitely changed the proportion of malt to electricity in those since I was a kid,” James said, a devious smile stretching across his face. “Maybe we should grind up the leftovers and see about dipping them in Filch’s cat’s dinner.”

Remus rolled his eyes. “Let’s stick to one semi-suicidal prank at a time. It’s hard enough—”

But Remus never got to finish making his point, because two sudden cries of triumph broke through the silence of the library, immediately followed by the harsh thunder of Madam Fludd’s protestations.

Remus and James looked at each other immediately. “That’s Sirius and Peter.”

They broke into a near-run, all thoughts of Voltesers and Hogsmeade trips out of their mind, and came around the corner to see exactly what Remus had been hoping for: his two friends, triumphantly dancing about their table and ignoring the increasingly irate specter of Madam Fludd’s face that was still yelling at them from a hole in the bookshelf.

“We’ve got it!” Sirius yelled as they came up. “I found it — well, Peter suggested the book, but I found it!”

“It _was_ something from McGonagall’s class,” Peter said. “But it wasn’t in _Intermediate Transfiguration._ I went back to the recommended reading list for the Transfiguration OWLs and there was this other book listed and so I grabbed it for Sirius and—”

“Yeah, yeah, we get it, Peter, you found it.” James sat down and pulled Sirius with him, grabbing the small book in front of him. “Where is it? This is something about transforming one big thing into six small things.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s not it,” Sirius said, taking the book away from James — and nearly ripping the cover off, Remus noted. “That does sound cool though; we should definitely try that… Here it is! ‘Fiddlewood’s Inanimate Animation.’ Apparently it’ll work on anything humanoid: statues, suits of armor, dolls…”

“That is _great_ , Sirius.” Remus was glad to see Sirius so happy. He'd been sort of secretive and reserved the last few weeks — well, reserved for Sirius — and it had only seemed to get worse after the subject of the Hieroglyphic Hall prank came up last week. There had been a whole two-day period when Remus hadn’t seen Sirius outside of classes and meals, and he hadn’t come up with any excuse better than an almost shyly delivered ‘studying’ when Remus had gently pressed him on it. It was very weird.

Could his friend Barry be the problem again? The last time Sirius had been acting this unusual was when the Ravenclaw had froze him out last month. But that situation had seemed to resolve itself as soon as Remus told Sirius just to talk to him — the other boy had come right up to him the next day to say things were fine, and that Barry had thought he insulted his family or something. Typical pureblood nonsense. But maybe…

“There’s an incantation,” Peter interrupted, “but it’s very short, and we could do it before the boys even come past, as long as we don’t lose focus. The statues’ll sort of have a mind of their own, you see, and—”

“EXCUSE ME.”

Their heads all swiveled to look at Madam Fludd, who had showed up in the flesh to glower over them. All four of them were taller than the stout, almost burly witch standing up, but Remus wouldn’t have bet on their chances if Fludd pulled out a wand right now — or even rolled up the sleeves of her turquoise-blue robes.

“Perhaps you have not noticed,” she continued, “but this is a LIBRARY. And if you are not going to be QUIET in my LIBRARY, then GET OUT!”

Remus and the others didn’t argue. They just grabbed everything — even the textbooks they didn’t need anymore, Remus realized later, in the safety of their common room — and bolted, managing to keep their nervous giggles to a minimum until their feet were clattering across the cobblestones on the way to the Great Hall.

“Merlin’s pit-stains, she is just _awful_ ,” Sirius gasped. “Who hired her?”

“I don’t know, but I think we need to suggest to someone that she take over the Defense Against the Dark Arts position after the inevitable happens to Aelling,” James said. “Or maybe she should become the head Auror hunting down Voldemort.”

“Either way,” Remus said. “We have what we need now, right?”

“I would guess so,” Sirius replied. “We’ll need to practice now, but…”

“Perfect,” Remus interrupted. He could already see James getting ready to complain about the scrying crystal again, so he kept going. “Why don’t we drop our stuff upstairs and find a place to give it a try?”

“There’s the armory on the third floor,” Peter suggested. “I don’t think the statues there come to life, so maybe…”

“Sounds perfect,” Remus replied. “We all in?”

There was a moment’s hesitation in Sirius’s face, Remus noted, and he replied first by handing the small book to Remus. “Why don’t I meet you there? I have to run up to Ash-Karlsen’s office quick — I was going to ask him a question about our assignment for the weekend.”

Remus took the book, but with a bit of confusion. Sirius had just had Ancient Runes this afternoon, after lunch; he had the class at the same time as he was wasting his time in Divination. He couldn’t have just asked his question then?

But Sirius was already waving goodbye, and Remus didn’t want to rock the boat, so…

He just waved back, and then set his mind to the next task.

There would be plenty of time to figure out what was wrong with Sirius after they got back at these Hufflepuffs.

Wouldn’t there?

——

Sirius felt a sharp intake of breath at his neck. “Merlin’s bones, Sirius.”

He was with Barry again, in the furniture storeroom on the sixth floor. The afternoon sun was leaking in from somewhere, casting the whole room in a rosy glow that seemed to make the flush on Barry’s cheeks vanish. They had found a new couch to snog on, a plush green velvet that was soft in all the right places.

Sirius wasn’t the primary beneficiary of that today, though. Barry was on the couch, but Sirius was on Barry — their bodies on top of each other, touching everywhere they could. He could feel every bit of Barry beneath him, both the parts he wasn’t allowed to touch and the parts he _really_ wasn’t allowed to touch.

And Barry wanted more of it. He couldn’t believe Barry wanted more of it.

Sirius moved his lips from Barry’s, stopping here and there along his classmate’s cheekbones. Each time, he could feel Barry’s pulse under the skin, beating faster, faster, faster. His body began to move below Sirius’s, almost in tempo with the kisses but more uncertain.

Sirius didn’t care. He was willing to take what he could get. And for the first time in his life, it felt like he was going to get what he deserved.

“What do you want?” he whispered, an inch away from Barry’s ear. “Are you ready to be this person? Are you ready to admit—”

“Sirius?!”

The sound of a familiar voice sent Sirius rocketing away from Barry like a bolt of lightning. They were suddenly at two ends of the couch, the afternoon light had turned to the steely blue of a full moon, and Remus was standing there in the doorway, looking at him with horror in his eyes.

“Remus — it’s not — this isn’t — I’m not —”

“You’re a monster,” Remus said, his eyes never moving from Sirius’s. “We all thought I was the monster, but it’s you. It’s always been you.”

“No,” Sirius gasped, choking back a sob, paralyzed. He didn’t dare look at Barry. His skin felt ice-cold where their bodies had been joined. “Remus, you have to understand.”

“I do understand,” Remus replied. “That’s what you’ve been afraid of, isn’t it? That we’ll finally understand who you are. What you are.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Sirius said, mind racing. “This isn’t who I am.”

Remus’s face twisted in loathing. “Wake up, Sirius. You’ve always been like this. I just feel stupid for not having realized it sooner.”

Sirius could feel the room seeming to twist and shake around him. “Remus. You’re my friend. You have to believe me. I’m not a bad person, I’m just—”

“Wake up, Sirius,” Remus repeated, eyes boring into him. “Wake up. Wake up.”

“Wake up, you ninny!”

Sirius seemed to shoot back into his body like a cannonball, eyes popping wide open in bed.

He was in Gryffindor Tower, he realized, not the sixth floor. It was nighttime, and his dormitory was lit by nothing but candle and starlight. Someone was shaking him like mad. And there was this awful, awful dinging sound that would not stop.

“Where’d you put the bloody crystal?” Remus was whispering in his ear. “It won’t stop ringing and it’s woken everybody up and I don’t have a good answer for Jack and Nabin…”

Questions of dream and reality flew out of Sirius’s mind, and he flipped over in bed, nearly knocking Remus over as he bent down and under the bed, rummaging through a pile of robes he’d kicked under there earlier tonight.

“Sorry sorry sorry…”

His hands found purchase on the source of all the commotion: the scrying crystal attuned to Stafford and the other Hufflepuffs, buried deep in one of his pockets. As soon as his fingers brushed the gem, he could hear it cut off mid-ding, and he heard the collective sigh of relief even before he sat up in bed, blinking at the other five boys in the room, in various states of undress and irritation.

“What in the name of Saint Agnes was that?” Nabin spat. To Sirius’s surprise, it looked like James was almost holding him back; the boy’s hands were clenched tightly into fists. Jack was still in bed, but looked equally irritated — though twice as comical, with a halo of bed-head that put James’s usual look to shame. Peter was on his feet too, looking sick with worry and stammering something inaudible. “Scared me half to death, woke me out of dead sleep—”

To Sirius’s surprise, the lie came quickly to his sleep-addled brain. “Broken Remembrall,” he said, trying his best to look more apologetic than confused. “Sorry, I forgot about it… I mean I didn’t think it would do that.”

That seemed to appease Nabin, mostly, but now Jack was leaning forward. “Remembralls don’t do that,” he said in a sleepy drawl.

“Well, uh…”

“That’s what’s broken about it,” James interrupted. “Pretty awful, isn’t it? Yeah, I’ve been telling him to throw it out, but…”

“I keep forgetting,” Sirius finished, lamely. “Sort of ironic.”

Jack and Nabin just scowled back at them.

“Well, why don’t you go throw it out then,” Jack finally said. “Somewhere where I can’t hear it every time you remember something in your dreams.”

Sirius felt a shiver go down his back. This was a dream he wished he could forget.

“That’s a great idea,” Remus said, head turning to try and catch the eyes of Peter and James as well. “Sirius, weren’t you going to send it to your uncle to see if he could fix it? Maybe we should all go to the Owlery with you right now so you don’t forget again.”

Sirius could see Peter starting to protest, until James gently stepped on his toes. The light of painful understanding suddenly seemed to illuminate his face.

“You’re all gonna break curfew together so Sirius can mail his broken Remembrall?” Nabin said, as they all rushed to put their robes on. “You clearly all need a new one since you’ve forgotten that you’ve already lost Gryffindor hundreds of points this year…”

Between the dream, and being woken up from the dream, and Nabin’s attitude, Sirius had finally had enough. “You know what, Nabin? Why don’t you just fuck off?”

It wasn’t elegant, but it worked. They were down the spiral staircase and through the portrait-hole in three minutes without any more complaints.

“I cannot believe you said that,” Peter gasped, as they quickly scurried out of sight into the auxiliary stairwell down the hall. “Nabin’s going to be so pissed in the morning.”

“Yeah, well…”

“You probably could have been a bit nicer,” Remus whispered, biting his lip. “He is going to want to know why you were such a prat.”

“It’s after midnight,” Sirius replied. “I was a prat because I was rudely woken up by someone shaking me.”

“Well the rest of us were woken up by that thing in your pocket,” James said. “So come on. We don’t know how much time we have. What are they doing?”

James made a good point. Sirius reached back into the pocket of the ropes he’d hastily thrown on over his pyjamas and pulled out the crystal. There was still movement within, though it seemed as shadowy as the corridor surrounding them.

As he lifted it to his eye and peered within, expecting to see the Hufflepuff common room, he instead looked down on a parapet on the edge of the castle. All four of their targets were there, dressed in robes and pyjamas just like the four of them, and they were focused intently on a small box that appeared to be a wireless set. Elphick seemed to be doing something to it with his wand, but otherwise the four of them were just sitting there, fascinated, the same way they usually were in their common room on Sunday evenings.

“Where are they?” James whispered. “What are they up to?”

“Nothing, apparently,” Sirius said, taking the crystal away from his eye and handing it to James. “They’re just on the edge of the castle somewhere, doing nothing. Can’t even tell where, really; all the tower-tops look the same to me.”

“Let me see,” Remus said, taking the gem away from James after a moment. But he didn’t seem to have much better luck. “I mean, they’re clearly up high, on this floor, but you’re right. They could be anywhere, and we can’t just check every parapet in the castle…”

“We’re sure they’re on the top level of the castle?” Peter asked. “There are a few openings that are lower down…”

“Here, give it a shot,” Remus said, handing it over. “Even if we figure out where they are, there’s no guarantee—”

“I’ve got it.”

Every head turned to look at Peter. “Wait, what?” Sirius said.

“They’re not on the seventh floor,” Peter said. “They’re on the sixth. I can just barely see the stone eagles that are at the top of Ravenclaw Tower in the distance, and they’re just a little below that, which means they must be on the sixth-floor parapet, not the fourth-floor one. Besides, the fourth-floor one is more squareish , and it’s right next to Professor Binns’s office, so it wouldn’t be a good place to be…”

Peter trailed off as he realized Sirius and the others were gaping at him. “What? I walk around the castle a lot.”

“No kidding,” James said.

“So they’re on the sixth-floor parapet,” Remus said, looking around them. “What’s that close to?”

“My Ancient Runes classroom,” Sirius realized aloud, before Peter could reply.

“Oh, that’s brilliant,” James said.

“But we don’t want to go right there,” Remus said. “We need someplace with—”

“I know, I know, statues.”

Sirius racked his brain, trying to lay out a map of the sixth floor in his mind without thinking too hard about the room he’d just been dreaming he was in.

“There’s a couple busts nearby, but that won’t work… Nothing in the Trophy Room…”

“But what about down the hall from the Trophy Room?”

“Yes!” Sirius shouted, forgetting to keep his voice down. “Yes, that’s perfect, Peter. And if they’re on the balcony there—”

“They’ll need to go right through that hallway to avoid walking past your Runes professor’s office.”

“Okay,” Sirius said. “I think we’ve got it. But we should hurry. I don’t know how long they’ll be there, and we can’t go straight there because curfew and prefects and all that.”

“So where are we headed?” James asked.

“Down the stairs,” Sirius replied. “Follow me. This is going to be a little weird.”

Sirius rushed down the steps, his friends trailing behind. As they ran, the stairs curved and curved, ever so slightly steering them around the castle as they descended to the fourth floor. Memories of snogging prefects dancing in his head, he led them to a small spiral staircase halfway across the castle, taking breaks periodically to make sure the four Hufflepuffs were still there.

They went up two flights, ending up three doors down from the furniture storeroom that Sirius steered his friends away from without looking at. Quieter now, they scurried down the hall, ears perked for the slightest sound of prefects’ footsteps.

“We should have grabbed my Invisibility Cloak,” James groused.

“There’s too many of us,” Remus replied. “We’d be moving even slower than we are now.”

“Yeah,” James said. “But we’d be invisible.”

“Both of you shut up,” Sirius hissed. “I’m pretty sure this is a normal patrol route after curfew so we don’t have much time before—”

Sirius never finished what he was saying. From behind them, there was a sort of WHUMF-BANG noise, and the four of them fell to the ground in surprise.

“Holy hell!”

“Merlin and Nimue!”

“Fuck,” Sirius added simply, trying to ignore the pain radiating from his palms and kneecaps where he’d tried to catch himself. “What in the name of Merlin was that all?”

“I have no idea,” Remus said. “But it wasn’t us. Was it the Hufflepuffs?”

Sirius quickly pulled his crystal out and put it up to his eye. Stafford and the others were still visible, but they were moving now, picking up the wireless and hurrying off the balcony.

“They’re leaving,” Sirius said, watching them as they went. “They’re not going to see us as they go, but…”

“We missed them,” Remus said flatly.

“Yeah.” Sirius lowered the crystal and put it back into his pocket as he stood up. “We missed them.”

“Well that just takes the Cauldron Cake,” James said, storming to his feet. “We were so close!”

“James, keep your voice down,” Remus said.

James ignored him. “We should have come straight here. What was the point of all this running around?”

“The point was there’s always prefects on the Grand Staircase, you defective Kneazle!” Sirius had given up all attempts at being quiet now. “It’s not my fault there was a random huge explosion!”

“Hey, about that explosion—”

“Not now, Peter!”

“No, he’s right, Sirius,” Remus said. “We really should—”

“What are you four doing out this late?!”

Sirius’s blood turned to ice. Even before he turned around, he knew who would be staring back at him: Professor McGonagall.

He did not really expect her to be wearing a surprisingly fetching tartan dressing gown, though.

“P-professor McGonagall,” Peter stammered. “We were just, uh…”

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Sirius nearly fell over in shock. She was _worried_ about them?!

“Did you see the explosion?”

“Explosion?” Remus said. “We felt it, but—”

“Good,” McGonagall said, looking past them for something. Sirius noticed her wand was out and at the ready. “Five points from Gryffindor for being out past curfew. Now get back to the common room.”

Sirius’s heart sank. They’d been so good about not getting caught… “Five points each?”

“What?” McGonagall stopped mid-step, and Sirius instantly regretted speaking. “No, just — five points from Gryffindor, total, IF you stop looking at me and GO BACK UPSTAIRS!”

Sirius and the others weren’t stupid enough to say anything else. He thought he’d never run up a flight of stairs so fast in his life.

“Well, that was a complete disaster,” James said, collapsing into an armchair. There were a handful of bleary-eyed students in the common room as well, huddled around the fireplace whispering, but Sirius and the others ignored them.

“Do you think everything’s okay?” Peter said, worrying a thread on the hem of his robes. “McGonagall looked really worried. What if there was an attack on the castle?”

“If there was an attack on the castle, McGonagall wouldn’t have told us to just go sit up in Gryffindor Tower,” Remus replied. “We’d be sitting ducks.”

“That’s true, but—”

Sirius tuned them out and looked back into the depths of his crystal. He could still see all four of them, just climbing into the Hufflepuff common room. Out of reach.

“We’ll have another chance to get them,” Sirius said to James. “This isn’t over.”

“Maybe not,” James said. “But we can’t count on being able to run to where they are fast enough. We might not have even made it tonight even without that explosion.”

Sirius had to begrudgingly admit that James had a point. But it wasn’t like he could do anything about it. “Look, we know they were listening to something on the wireless. Do you think we could catch them at it again?”

“Maybe,” James said, “but they’ve never done that before. And we can’t just sit up every night waiting to figure out what they were listening to. It’s not like happens on a schedule—”

And then, before his eyes, Sirius saw James figure it out.

“Merlin’s ghost,” he said. “They’re following the Finches!”

“I’m sorry,” Sirius said. “They’re doing what now?”

——

“The Fitchburg Finches,” James said as they came down the Grand Staircase to breakfast the next morning. He could barely hear himself over the unusually loud clamor of gossip and rumormongering surrounding them. “Do you lot seriously not listen to anything I say about Quidditch?”

“I mean, yeah,” Sirius said. “We pretty much tune you out unless you’re talking about the Gryffindor team.”

“Or the Appleby Arrows,” Peter interjected. “My mum’s great-niece twice removed or something is one of their Beaters. Did I ever tell you that?”

“Well, you’re going to regret not listening to me now,” James said, reaching into his bag again to double-check that he’d grabbed the latest issue of Seeker Weekly. “Thanks to me, we can get justice for Peter.”

“I mean, I found a scrying spell, bought a crystal to use it on, and even tracked down a statue animating enchantment,” Sirius replied, stifling a yawn. “But sure, great work with your ‘Finches,’ James.”

Merlin, he was irritable when he didn’t get his nine hours of sleep.

When they got down to the Great Hall, James was surprised to see Dumbledore already standing at his podium, surveying an increasingly loud and anxious group of students. The rest of the staff table was only about half populated — McGonagall was there, he saw, but O’Brien, Slughorn and Aelling were all absent, leaving ominously empty chairs in between the rest of the faculty.

“Please be seated at your leisure,” Dumbledore said, his voice already magnified to echo across the room. “I have a brief announcement to make before breakfast begins, but the kitchen has assured me they are in no rush to begin service.”

James took the hint, and it seemed as though the rest of the students did as well. As he and his friends hurried to take their seats, the dull roar of conversation slowly trickled off to a handful of whispers.

“Thank you for your indulgence,” Dumbledore said, giving them a slight bow. “While many of you may already know this, the heavy sleepers among you need to be informed of a small disturbance that took place last night, after curfew. While the sound of an explosion is often a sign of impending inconveniences, I can assure you that none of you are in danger, thanks to the work of our capable staff.”

From the slight uptick in muttering, that was not as reassuring as Dumbledore might have hoped.

“However,” he continued, “I do have a small piece of information to relay regarding Professor Aelling.”

The muttering went silent instantly. James honestly didn’t even like Aelling that much, but his stomach still sank into his shoes anyway.

“As you may have already gathered, Professor Aelling…”

Has been murdered? Has been revealed as a Death Eater? Was found running an illegal dragon-fighting ring?

“...came to us with a command of six different languages.”

Wait. What?

“Unfortunately, it appears that is no longer the case,” Dumbledore continued. “Due to an unfortunate accident while attempting to craft a new protective enchantment for the castle, they now appear to only retain their comprehension of Latin, Greek, and Gobbledegook.”

A stunned silence hung over the Great Hall.

“After a brief physical examination by Madam Pomfrey, we have ascertained that Professor Aelling is otherwise in perfect health, so there is no need to worry about their safety. However, while Professor Aelling has offered to remain at Hogwarts and continue conducting classes in one of their three remaining _lingua franca_ …”

Which one? Gobbledegook?!

“I have instead strongly suggested they instead return to their home in London where they might begin re-learning any languages of their choosing.”

“Well, there goes another Defense Against the Dark Arts professor,” Sirius said. “At least this one didn’t blow up.”

“We don’t know Professor Brocken blew up.”

“We don’t know that she _didn’t._ ”

“For the remainder of the term,” Dumbledore continued, “Defense Against the Dark Arts classes will be briefly postponed.”

A sudden cheer went up from various points around the room, startling a few of the professors at the staff table. James even saw the normally unflappable headmaster’s eyebrows raise.

“Do not get too excited,” he said dryly. “After the Easter holiday, classes will resume, and will be taught by a number of Ministry trainees that are being hand-selected by Prime Minister Eugenia Jenkins. She assures me that this will _not_ be a punishment for them, and hopes that one will even prove themselves a worthy successor for the position come next September.”

“They’ll probably all spontaneously combust at the same time,” James whispered.

“Or they’ll go down one by one, like a murder mystery,” Peter said. “Have you ever read—”

“Probably not,” James interrupted. “But I like the idea. Very spooky.”

“If you have any questions,” Dumbledore said, “please direct them to your head of house following the delicious morning repast the Hogwarts house-elves have prepared for you. Slytherin House should take note, however, that Professor Slughorn will be out for the day, as he and Professor O’Brien have gone with Professor Aelling to St. Mungo’s for a brief medical consultation. Now, please resume your gossip, with a side of breakfast sausages!”

Dumbledore clapped his hands three times, and true to his word, both the sound of gossiping students and breakfast sausages came into being.

“Did you hear that?” James said. “Slughorn’s gone! That means no double Potions this morning!”

“Really?” Remus said. “That’s your takeaway?”

“Tell us the thing about the Finches,” Sirius said, his mouth already full of food. “You’ve been dragging it out since last night.”

“Oh, right.” James bent down and grabbed his magazine, quickly flipping past the recap of the All-Africa Cup to get to the schedules. “So, you all know how there’s Quidditch in other countries, right?”

The other three boys all looked at each other. “Obviously,” Sirius finally replied.

“So the Fitchburg Finches are one of the American teams. They used to be the top team in the league, actually, though now they’re in a downswing ever since—”

Remus put his head in his hands. “Oh my god, James, just tell us the thing!”

“Okay, well, I thought it was weird that these four guys would risk getting caught out after curfew just to listen to a program on the wireless,” James continued. “If there was something they really wanted to hear, they could always just go down to their common room and listen to it, or even snag a wireless and bring it up to their dorm room. I think that’s probably what they were doing all of the other times we saw them in their common room — listening to one Quidditch match or another.”

“Then why did they go out to the parapet?”

“That’s the part I couldn’t figure out at first,” James said. “But then Sirius mentioned schedules last night and—”

James turned the schedule around so the boys on the opposite end of the table could get a better look.

“There’s 20-odd teams in the American League, and almost all of them play at least once a week. Most of the time, those games are early enough in the day across the Atlantic that you can catch them on the wireless at night here — WWN Quidditch will usually broadcast live coverage of at least one game per time slot, unless there’s an insanely long match from the night before here in the islands, or something happening in Australia, or — well, you get it.”

“I guess, but…” Remus squinted at the tiny list of teams and times. “If the games are aired on the wireless, why didn’t they just stay in the common room, like you said.”

“Because WWN doesn’t air all the games.” James jabbed his finger down at a small rectangle full of text at the bottom of the page, titled “Off-Wireless Matches.” “If a game is happening at the same time as a game that’s considered more important, or if it’s deemed to be too late for the average listener…”

“The WWN doesn’t air it,” Remus finished. “That makes sense. So how are they picking up the game?”

James smirked. “You haven’t been paying attention in Muggle Studies, Remus. Wizarding wireless follows the same principles as Muggle wireless. At higher altitudes, you can pick up more frequencies.”

Peter gasped. “They’re picking up an American network!”

“Right as rain, Peter. I looked at the schedule before we went to bed last night.” James moved his finger higher, pointing at the Finches-Jackalopes game from yesterday. “The Finches were playing a late game yesterday — afternoon for them, but late evening for us. And WWN didn’t air that game because the current league champions, the Sweetwater All-Stars, were playing the same time. So…”

“Up to the parapets,” Sirius finished. “How come we didn’t realize this sooner?”

“Well, that’s the bad news,” James said. “The Finches aren’t _usually_ left off the wireless schedule. Like I said, they’re usually really good, but without Macklebee—”

“When’s the next game, James?”

James looked at Remus nervously. “It’s not as much a next game as a…last game.”

He turned the page, revealing a whole new set of schedules with the words “Final Week of Play” in the top corner.

“The U.S. Quidditch League usually runs another week or two longer before but they never play over the Easter holiday. So this year, they’ve condensed the schedule — that’s part of the reason the Finches had a late game yesterday in the first place.

“On the one hand, we’re lucky — the last Finches game is in the afternoon, and it’s not going to be aired on WWN Quidditch. But on the other hand…”

Remus had already seen it. “It’s this Friday? The night before a full moon?” He was biting his lip now, as if he was thinking of saying more but couldn’t decide how.

“I’m sorry,” James said quickly. “I didn’t pick the day. And it’s not like it’s an actual full moon, you know?”

Remus didn’t say anything.

“If there was any other option, I’d suggest it,” James said. “But think back to last night. If we’d known they were going up to the sixth floor, we wouldn’t even have had to wait for them to come back down. We could have ambushed them on the way up, sent our statues on their merry way, and gone back to bed early.”

Remus still looked unsure. But then Peter piped up.

“If we do this,” Peter said, “we did it. We’ve finished the list without getting caught. That’s what we wanted. If we don’t act now…”

“Okay,” Remus said, though he didn’t look happy about it. “You’re right. It’s not like I can change a day early. I’ll just have an extra chocolate bar before we go down to the sixth floor or something.”

“Actually,” James said, “let’s take a walk around the castle with our newly free first period. I have an idea for a better spot to catch them off-guard…”

——

Remus should never have agreed to do this.

He knew he wasn’t going to unexpectedly shift on the spot, grow hair and claws and fangs and the awful beady eyes he’d never seen but always imagined he had ever since he went into the Hogwarts library his first year during a particularly bad full moon weekend and shuffled a copy of _Hildegarde’s Monstrous Menagerie_ off the shelf and flipped to the entry on werewolves and looked through illustrations that didn’t even move because Hildegarde thought it would be too frightening to use enchanted illustrations.

But it felt like he was. Maybe it was just because he was doing something the night before his change, or because he’d had all week to _anticipate_ doing something the night before his change, but he was all nerves. He couldn’t focus on anything. He wanted it all to be over.

Or maybe he wanted it to be happening, right now. He wanted to have the Hufflepuffs at his mercy, swinging from the grasp of the statues James had found, so he could get the justice his friend deserved.

He felt almost hungry for it.

It was really, really unsettling.

Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if he wasn’t pressed up against all three of his friends, huddled under an Invisibility Cloak that was no longer the right size to cover four people — if it ever had been.

“Can’t you just slide over a little?” James hissed at Sirius. “You’re taking up more than your fair share.”

“Well, I’m sorry that I’m _physically larger than you_ , James. Next time we all get under _your_ Invisibility Cloak, I’ll skip lunch and throw up dinner.”

In Remus’s opinion, they didn’t need the cloak at all. There wasn’t a single torch in this hallway, and the only light was coming from thin shafts of moonlight, slipping in from equally thin windows a whole story above them. It was a dim passage even in broad daylight; with the sun down, Remus didn’t think anyone would be able to see them if they were stark naked and covered in Chudley Cannons-orange body paint.

More importantly, it was the sort of passageway that prefects didn’t patrol. It was out of the way from the main stairwells, creepy and dark, and didn’t go anywhere important.

But it was also the most logical route for the Hufflepuffs to take to get up to the sixth floor. On Monday, Remus had gone with James and the others down to the basement, standing outside the Hufflepuff common room and trying to imagine how to sneak around after curfew, one step at a time. They couldn’t go through the Entrance Hall, for example, so they had to go further down the hall, past the kitchens. The next hallway was a favorite haunt of Peeves’, so prefects stayed away, so it was the perfect way to get across the castle and take the stairs up to ground level.

And so on, and so on, until they got here: a tiny, secluded little hallway on the third floor that no one would bother taking unless they wanted to get to the out-of-the-way checkered stairwell that went straight up to the sixth floor without passing a single main corridor.

Plus, it had exactly four statues, so, bonus.

“Where are they at?” Peter asked.

Sirius shifted slightly, definitely more than he needed to, and held the crystal up to his eye, completely ignoring James’s furious scowl.

“They’re coming exactly the way we thought,” he whispered. “Just taking the first set of stairs now. I’m guessing that they’ll be here in about five minutes.”

“Perfect,” Remus said, surprised by the venom in his voice.

“Can we cast the spell now?” James said. “I think we can hold animated statues perfectly still for five minutes.”

“Agreed,” Sirius said, swapping the crystal for his wand. “Everyone has their statue picked out, right?”

Remus just nodded. He had picked the one closest to the group, hoping it would be easier to keep his focus on a statue that was close by. He was regretting it the more he looked at the statue though — the wizard it depicted had no less than three gnarls redirecting the shape of its back, and his face was cruel and sharp. It gave him the shivers.

Or maybe that was just the moonlight creeping in.

James was the first to raise his wand under the cloak, pointing it all the way across the room at the furthest statue, a tall and strong-looking knight. “ _Animati Locomotor._ ”

For a moment, there was a faint golden glow around the statue, and in the dim light Remus could just barely see its stone “flesh” seem to ripple like muscles. And then it was still again — but there was a readiness to it now.

Sirius and Peter followed suit quickly, their statues glowing and freezing in turn. Which meant it was Remus’s turn.

“ _Animati Locomotor_ ,” he murmured, feeling itchy.

As the statue beside them began to glow, Remus had the sudden sensation of being in two places at once. He was here, under the cloak, but he was also a few feet away, on a pedestal, leaning forward at an odd angle. Reflexively, he “stretched,” and before his eyes the statue shifted, pushing down on the staff it held in its hands to pull itself upright as a bend of the back or two straightened out.

“Remus!” James hissed. “Cut it out.”

“Sorry,” Remus said right away. With a bit of concentration, he held the statue in place — a slightly different position than before, but he couldn’t imagine the other boys would notice. “This spell still feels weird.”

“Well, weird or not,” James replied, “we still need you to—”

The sound of footsteps and laughter stopped him cold.

Remus could feel a bead of sweat trickling down the back of his neck.

“—and then I said, ‘Melanie, if you wanted to see me without my robes on, I’d rather you just ask, not blow up our cauldron.’”

Jeremy Elphick came into sight first, his friends all laughing behind him. It was weird seeing the four of them in person after weeks of spying on them in miniature in Sirius’s crystal. Howell Abbott had started growing his hair out again, he realized. It was a weird thing to realize.

Remus was trying not to breathe. Next to him, he could see Peter’s foot twitching anxiously. He wanted to stop him but then he would have to either say something or grab him and that would make more noise than the twitching foot so he was just going to have to wait and hope that nothing bad happened which was infuriating and now _his_ foot was twitching too dammit.

“I thought you were still trying to get Serena to give you the time of day,” Stafford said. “I was talking you up during practice…”

“I mean, I guess,” Elphick continued, “but isn’t she still pining for bloody Bill Thrussington?”

“Well, sure, but he’s Head Boy so he thinks he’s better than everyone. And frankly I still think he’s queer as a green Galleon so—”

There was the sudden sound of stone scraping against stone, and the Hufflepuffs immediately froze in place.

“Merlin’s ghost,” Abbott gasped. “What was that?”

Remus tried very hard not to look at Sirius. The sound had come from his statue’s corner of the room.

He couldn’t blame his friend. The statues they’d enchanted wanted to move. It was taking everything Remus had to hold his in place. But they’d agreed they would wait until the Hufflepuffs were halfway through the hall and they weren’t quite there yet but now they were looking in the direction of that statue.

“It’s probably one of the damn ghosts,” Nettles said. “Still think it’s barmy that Professor Dumbledore just lets ghosts run amok in this place. My dad says—”

“We know what your dad says,” Elphick said. Remus could practically hear the eye roll, even if the light was too dim to see it. “Come on. We’re going to miss the start of the match if we hang around here.”

“Just give me a minute,” Abbott said. He had his wand out now, Remus realized. “I just want to make sure…”

Remus stole a tiny glance out of his peripheral at Sirius. Their friend looked absolutely mortified, but he was holding steady now. They would be fine. They just had to wait until—

There was the same sound again, from James’ corner of the room, and now all four of the Hufflepuffs were turning with their wands out.

“Okay, I know I heard that one,” Abbott said.

“Who’s there?” Elphick shouted. He was looking back and forth, trying to peer into each dark corner in turn. “Show yourself!”

There was no need to panic. The Hufflepuffs couldn’t see them under the Invisibility Cloak. The plan was that even if something like this happened, they were supposed to hold in place until the Hufflepuffs got to the very middle of the room. Then they would all move at once, so they wouldn’t have time to respond.

It had been Remus’s plan. He’d made the suggestion, earlier in the week, and fought for a whole day with James and Sirius about it. But they’d agreed, in the end, that it was smarter for them all to act in unison than for one of them to suddenly take the lead without warning.

But in the moment, when all of the Hufflepuffs were distracted and facing away from them?

Remus didn’t really like his plan all that much.

His statue moved with unexpected speed, leaping off its platform and landing on the floor in front of the Hufflepuffs with a bang. All of them screamed — as did Peter, Remus sourly noted — but none of them were able to do anything before Remus swept their feet out from under them with the statue’s long granite staff.

“Remus,” James hissed, “what are you—”

“It’s too late, James,” Sirius muttered, and Remus saw his statue start to move too, stepping down and walking over to the fallen Hufflepuffs. A quick glance to his right revealed that Peter had done the same thing.

“You lot are a bunch of arseholes,” James grumbled. But his knight stepped off too, moving as fast as its heavy stone armor would allow.

Remus wasn’t really listening anymore. His attention was on the statue he was controlling, which dropped its staff on the ground with a heavy bang and bent to pick up Stafford by the leg, dangling him in the air.

“Let go of me, you fucking stone prick!”

Remus shook him a little bit, which seemed to terrify the words right out of him. It suddenly occurred to him that they hadn’t really figured out a way to keep the boys quiet as they abducted them. That might be a problem.

But he had bigger problems, he realized, as Elphick raised his wand from a prone position and pointed it right at Remus’s statue. “ _Everte Statem!_ ”

An orange swirl billowed out from his wand, clipping the statue’s shoulder, and Remus almost felt the blow, taking half a step back as his statue pinwheeled to the ground, sending splinters of stone in every direction. The force of the fall seemed to have knocked out Stafford at least, but it had also almost undone Remus’s control over his statue. He shook his head back and forth, trying to concentrate.

Elphick started to turn to attack again, but James’s knight was suddenly there behind him, bending to wrap his arms around Elphick and pin the Hufflepuff’s arms down. He lifted Elphick high in the air, legs kicking feebly.

“You should just send the statue away now,” Sirius whispered, eyes focused on his own statue, which had bent down to try and keep Abbott from standing. “If you give it a command—”

“Then what if Elphick breaks free?” James’s statue was twisting back and forth now, trying to shake Elphick into unconsciousness. “We should have thought of this, we really should have thought of this…”

There was another blast of light and a bang, and Remus realized that the witch statue Peter had been controlling was now short its left arm. There was a cry of triumph from Nettles, who was now getting properly to his feet and turning to survey the room.

“Oh no you don’t,” Remus muttered. His statue was mostly on his feet now, and Remus commanded it to run — to throw all its weight directly at Ivan Nettles.

He never saw Remus coming.

There was a sickening crunch as the statue collided with the Hufflepuff. Nettles flew back a foot and a half, bouncing on the floor once before rolling to a stop.

“Jesus,” Peter breathed, and Remus could see the witch statue completely freeze as Peter looked back at him. “Remus, you really got him.”

“I know,” Remus said, surveying the battlefield. There were just two left now, Abbott and Elphick. Abbott had just managed to escape the reach of Sirius’s statue’s arms and was scurrying backwards on his hands and feet, pulling his wand at the last second and screaming a “ _Bombarda_!” up at the stone entity.

There was a loud bang, and the statue exploded, spraying rubble across the hall and down on top of Abbott. But the Hufflepuff wasn’t hurt, or at least not hurt much, and he scrambled to his feet, wiping blood away from a small cut on the top of his forehead.

“Hang on, Jeremy,” he said, looking back and forth between James’s knight and Remus’s wizard. “I’ll get you in a second, mate. Just let me figure this out.”

“Drop him,” Remus hissed, mind going a mile a minute.

“What?”

“Drop him, James, I have a plan!”

James looked at Remus, worry plain on his face. But he did as Remus asked. His knight opened his arms, letting Elphick collapse to the ground, and took two steps back.

A flash of relief crossed Abbott’s face, and he hurried over to his friend’s side. “Oh thank Merlin — Jeremy, are you—”

Remus let Abbott take exactly five steps. And then he threw the Invisibility Cloak off to the side, ignoring the panicked shouts of his friends, and cast a Trip Jinx on him.

Abbott never knew what happened. One moment, he was running, and the next he was falling, crashing straight into Elphick with a crunch. They rolled along the floor, landing opposite each other and didn’t move.

Remus could have howled with delight.

“What the hell are you thinking?” James shouted, stuffing his cloak back into his bag as he stomped up behind Remus.

“I was thinking we needed to end this,” Remus said simply. He surveyed the ground. He could see all four Hufflepuffs were breathing, thank Merlin, but they wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.

“Bit of a flair for the dramatic, don’t you think?”

“James, be quiet,” Peter said. “What if they wake up?”

“They are not waking up,” Sirius said, walking over and kicking Stafford lightly with his shoe. “They are out like a light.”

“Which was not the plan,” James said. “It wasn’t _your_ plan, Remus.”

But Remus wasn’t listening. He walked across the battlefield, stepping over bits of granite, until he was looking down at Stafford.

“I think,” he said, staring down with contempt, “these bastards will think twice before they try and hurt anyone else ever again.”

“I mean, sure,” Peter said, “but—”

“We’re the good guys, Peter,” Remus said. All his nerves were gone now. He felt a surge of energy he’d never really experienced this close to the full moon. Like he was more fully alive. Like he was on top of the world. “We’re the good guys, and we just won.”

And then…

“Oh my god.”

Remus’s head turned to look at the opposite entrance. Standing there, just visible in the dim light, were Lily Evans and Severus Snape, wands drawn.

No one said anything, for a long, painful moment.

And in that moment, Remus had a sudden instant of clarity, imagining what they must look like right now, standing over four broken young men.

“What have you done?” Lily finally said, looking from Hufflepuff to Hufflepuff, and finally right at James.

“Lily—”

“Are these some of the boys who attacked Peter?”

Peter made a soft little broken sound, and Remus looked at James in shock. He’d told someone else what they were doing. He’d told Lily Evans all about Peter, and hadn’t even…

“The worst ones,” James said. He was pleading, almost. “They’re the ones who pushed him down the stairs at the start of the year. And then they jumped him in the hallway right before Christmas.”

Lily looked like she wasn’t even listening. “You said this wasn’t revenge, James. It was just poetic justice.”

“This is—”

“No it isn’t,” she interrupted, looking at him hard. “I don’t know exactly what happened here, James, but Severus and I could hear it halfway across the castle. I could hear their shouting and the explosions and I knew we had to see what was happening, make sure it wasn’t…”

She left the thought unfinished, but Remus didn’t need her to complete it. He remembered the explosion last weekend that crippled Aelling, and the way everyone in the common room had been acting. Like it was a Death Eater attack.

But he could have feelings about that later. There was something more important in what Lily had just told them. Something they needed to deal with.

“James,” Remus said, gently as he could. “We can’t stay here, James. Lily’s right, this got too loud, too fast, and if we don’t go…”

“Don’t you dare,” Lily said, her voice hard. “We’re staying here until some prefects show up.”

“You must be mad,” Sirius said, stepping forward. “You’re out-of-bounds too, Evans. What excuse are you going to have when they get here?”

The thought seemed to not have occurred to her. “Well… I…”

Her hesitation was enough for Remus. “Come on,” he said. “I think we’re done here.”

But as he turned, Severus Snape spoke for the first time.

“ _Levicorpus._ ”

There was no warning but the word. Before he had a second to think, Remus was upside down, dangling in the air by an ankle, his robes flopping down to hang by his armpits and his wand a foot and a half out of reach on the ground.

“What the hell?!”

“Remus!” Peter was running over, trying to pull him down, but that was wrong, they needed to be…

Still disoriented, Remus didn’t even hear Snape say the incantation again, but nonetheless, there was James, hanging upside-down himself. Sirius, cursing, got a shot of something off, but it must have missed. He was the third to join their group, and Peter not long after.

“What did you do that for?” he heard Lily say. “Now we’re no better than them.”

“We definitely are,” Snape sneered. “And more importantly, we can leave. The only thing they’re right about is that we can’t get caught with them.”

“Of course you would run, you snake!” James shouted. “If I could reach my wand right now—”

“Well, you can’t,” Snape said simply. Remus could hear the oily self-congratulations in his voice. “You caught these poor saps off-guard, and I caught _you_ off-guard. _That’s_ poetic justice.”

James started to unleash a torrent of truly impressive swearing until Snape pronounced a simple “ _Mimblewimble_.” Then he continued to unleash a torrent of truly impressive nonsense.

“There has got to be a better spell to shut you up, Potter,” Snape muttered. “Maybe I’ll make that a personal project to work on before the end of term.”

“Severus…”

“You’re right,” Snape said. “We should leave.”

“That wasn’t…” From his vantage point, Remus could see Lily hesitate, look up at the four of them like she was going to undo Snape’s spell and let them down.

But then they both ran, hurrying out of the room the way they’d come.

The four of them hung there in silence for a few moments.

“Well,” Sirius finally said. “This turned out to be a disaster.”

“No kidding,” Remus replied.

James tried to say something, but ended up gagging on his own tongue and flapping about madly.

Remus pretended not to notice that Peter had begun to cry soundlessly.

“Prefects are going to be here any minute,” Sirius said. “So. How are we going to get out of this one?”


End file.
